Interferometer instrument design for New Millennium Deep Space 3

Gary H. Blackwood; Serge Dubovitsky; Roger P. Linfield; Peter W. Gorham

doi:10.1117/12.317194

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24 July 1998 Interferometer instrument design for New Millennium Deep Space 3

Gary H. Blackwood, Serge Dubovitsky, Roger P. Linfield, Peter W. Gorham

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Proceedings Volume 3350, Astronomical Interferometry; (1998) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.317194
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 1998, Kona, HI, United States

Abstract

Deep Space 3 will fly a stellar optical interferometer on three separate spacecraft in heliocentric orbits: one spacecraft for the Michelson beam combining optics, and two spacecraft for each of the starlight apertures. The spacecraft will formation fly to relative spacecraft distances from 100 meters to 1 kilometer, enabling an instrument resolution of 1 to 0.1 milliarcsecond. At each baseline length and orientation - up to 100 points in the synthetic aperture plane for a given astrophysical target - the instrument will measure source visibility amplitude form which the source brightness distribution can be determined. An infrared metrology system performs both linear and angular metrology between spacecraft and is sued to estimate delay jitter, interferometer delay and delay rate. Pointing and control mechanisms use the metrology error signals to stabilize delay jitter and to null delay and delay rate to enable detection and tracking of a white light fringe on a photon-counting detector. Once stabilized, fringes can be dispersed on a CCD in up to 80 spectral channels to attain high-accuracy measurements of visibility amplitude as a function of wavelength.

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Gary H. Blackwood, Serge Dubovitsky, Roger P. Linfield, and Peter W. Gorham "Interferometer instrument design for New Millennium Deep Space 3", Proc. SPIE 3350, Astronomical Interferometry, (24 July 1998); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.317194

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