Separated-spacecraft interferometer concept for the New Millennium Program

Details Separated-spacecraft interferometer concept for the New Millennium Program Separated-spacecraft interferometer concept for the New Millennium Program

Oct 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996spie.2807...51c&link_type=abstract

Proc. SPIE Vol. 2807, p. 51-58, Space Telescopes and Instruments IV, Pierre Y. Bely; James B. Breckinridge; Eds.

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

A separated spacecraft optical interferometer mission concept proposed for NASA's New Millennium Program is described. The interferometer instrument is distributed over three small spacecraft: two spacecraft serve as collectors, directing starlight toward a third spacecraft which combines the light and performs the interferometric detection. As the primary objective is technology demonstration, the optics are modest size, with a 12-cm aperture. The interferometer baseline is variable from 100 m to 1 km, providing angular resolutions from 1 to 0.1 milliarcseconds. Laser metrology is used to measure relative motions of the three spacecraft. High-bandwidth corrections for stationkeeping errors are accomplished by feedforward to an optical delay line in the combiner spacecraft; low-bandwidth corrections are accomplished by spacecraft control with an electric propulsion or cold-gas system. Determination of rotation of the constellation as a whole uses a Kilometric Optical Gyro, which employs counter-propagating laser beams among the three spacecraft to measure rotation with high accuracy. The mission is deployed in a low-disturbance solar orbit to minimize the stationkeeping burden. As it is well beyond the coverage of the GPS constellation, deployment and coarse stationkeeping are monitored with a GPS-like system, with each spacecraft providing both transmit and receive ranging and attitude functions.

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