The recent Red Bull Stratos Project enabled Felix Baumgartner to skydive from 127,852 feet, breaking a number of
world records, and also become the first person to break the sound barrier in free fall. This incredible example of human
achievement was documented by a group of optical imaging scientists who worked for over four years to develop and
test the necessary systems and equipment. This monumental leap was captured by 35 cameras to provide a full picture of
what this endeavor means for the future of scientific exploration. This special presentation will feature an insider look
behind the Stratos Project: goals, challenges, and lessons learned.
Launch Vehicle Imaging Telescopes (LVIT) are expensive, high quality devices intended for improving the safety of
vehicle personnel, ground support, civilians, and physical assets during launch activities. If allowed to degrade from the
combination of wear, environmental factors, and ineffective or inadequate maintenance, these devices lose their ability
to provide adequate quality imagery to analysts to prevent catastrophic events such as the NASA Space Shuttle,
Challenger, accident in 1986 and the Columbia disaster of 2003. A software tool incorporating aberrations and
diffraction that was developed for maintenance evaluation and modeling of telescope imagery is presented. This tool
provides MTF-based image quality metric outputs which are correlated to ascent imagery analysts' perception of image
quality, allowing a prediction of usefulness of imagery which would be produced by a telescope under different
simulated conditions.
The implementation plan for the "return-to-flight" of the space shuttle after the spectacular Columbia disaster upon re-entering the earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003 included significant upgrades to the Ground Camera Ascent Imagery assets at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The accident was due to damage incurred when a piece if insulating foam debris from the external fuel tank struck the left wing during take-off. The Ground Camera Ascent Imagery Project encompasses a wide variety of launch vehicle tracking telescopes and cameras at the Eastern Range. Most of these launch vehicle imaging telescopes are manually tracked and fitted with video and 35 mm film cameras, and many of them are fixed-focus (i.e., focused at the hyperfocal distance for the duration of the launch). In this paper we describe a systems engineering analysis approach for obtaining performance predictions of these aging launch vehicle imaging telescopes. Recommendations for a continuing maintenance and refurbishment program that closes the loop around the KSC photo-interpreter are included.
Good wavefront quality, easy to align, and stable mounts are desired requirements for any optical system. Small variations in design parameters of mounts can radically diminish these qualities and performance of an optical system if tolerances of mounts don’t match optical requirements. We present design considerations required to create a stable ball knuckle mount with 5 degrees of freedom for a secondary mirror. Our system also required a rigid hub-mounted primary mirror with minimal optical deformation. Wavefront figure will be traced during design development of each mount. Overall final optical alignment was stable in 2 gravity vectors.
The title for this paper derives from the method selected for upgrading an older telescope which needed to meet current range instrumentation requirements in the infrared portion of the optical spectrum. A major constraint imposed on the project at its outset was the need to keep the older telescope tube, tracking mount and mobile platform at its home base in Florida. In contrast to the traditional way of building telescopes by first designing the optical system and then designing the housing and mount, this upgrade began with fitting a new structure within the confines of the existing housing while increasing the usable aperture from a 29.5 inch diameter Classical Cassegrainian design to a 32 inch aperture system. This new structure evolved from an improved design approach including the use of low thermal coefficient of expansion materials, special baffles and modern alignment techniques. The tube which was to serve as the bottle, was stripped of its optical components while a completely new internal structure was fabricated independently at a facility in California. The redesign and fabrication process began with a search for the original optical design data and a shopping list of parts to be either modified or redesigned to fit the existing light path through a donut ring which incorporates the telescope's trunnion axis, to a second folding mirror thus enabling an infrared camera to be focused along an overhead track parallel to the telescope's optical axis. All of the original optics were reassembled and potted into new mounts. The secondary mirror was placed into a large ball-knuckle assembly which insured rapid and precise alignment. During the process of building the independent structure, an installation kit or erector set was created. This erector set included special tooling for attaching a large headring, all four metering rods, baffles and adapters as well as the primary mirror retaining ring, inside the original tube. All hardware was shipped to the field site in Florida where final assembly took place using only heavy lifting equipment and a minimum of inexpensive alignment devices.
Recently, two 12.5 inch diameter aperture Small Transportable ISTEF Pedestal System telescopes were designed using all-reflective optics to provide four optical bands, ranging from 0.3 microns to 15.0 microns, on a single instrument mount. The system, located at the Innovative Science and Technology Experimentation Facility, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, represents a simple, modular approach to multi-wavelength, multi-focal length instrumentation for he range. Easily transportable by air, land and sea, the system can be quickly installed in a temporary and primitive field site. The modular approach allows flexibility in planning for rocket launches at the Cape and for to the technical data collection activities worldwide. This paper describes the individual steps which were taken to design, fabricate and assemble two compete telescopes, six months and within budget. The methodology employed serves as a highly cost-effective and efficient model for future optical range instrumentation.
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