Integrated Sensing And Control System For A Large, Deployable, Wide-Field Optical System

John T. Watson; Dennis C. Ehn

doi:10.1117/12.958768

15 August 1980 Integrated Sensing And Control System For A Large, Deployable, Wide-Field Optical System

John T. Watson, Dennis C. Ehn

Proceedings Volume 0228, Active Optical Devices and Applications; (1980) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.958768
Event: 1980 Technical Symposium East, 1980, Washington, D.C., United States

Abstract

Large lightweight deployable optical systems are highly sensitive to structural changes from material aging and from solar heating. Optical tolerances are a fraction of a wavelength of the radiation the system is designed for and the tolerances remain constant regardless of system size. These large three-mirror infrared systems are to be manufactured at normal temperatures and for use at cryogenic temperatures. Even the most uniform optical material known, fused silica, becomes one of the quality limitations at these temperatures. The quality maintenance problem is compounded when many mirror panels must be assembled to provide a single large mirror area. The support structure must keep individual panels accurately located on one mathematical surface to a small fraction of a wavelength of light. The structural materials that are available to mount the mirrors are an order of magnitude poorer in stability than the fused silica mirror panels, thus large structural warpages with time and with the position of the sun must be accommodated by system actuators between the mirror panels and the support structure. A sensing system is described that measures mirror panel-to-panel mismatch and that determines system wavefront as a function of sensor location in the image field. These data are accepted by a central computer control system that deconvolves the control signals. Examples are given of computer simulation of the sensing and control process, showing the number of iterations required to bring a system into optical adjustment.

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John T. Watson and Dennis C. Ehn "Integrated Sensing And Control System For A Large, Deployable, Wide-Field Optical System", Proc. SPIE 0228, Active Optical Devices and Applications, (15 August 1980); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.958768

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