Thermally Actuated Primary Mirror for Space Exoplanet Imaging with TOPS

Details Thermally Actuated Primary Mirror for Space Exoplanet Imaging with TOPS Thermally Actuated Primary Mirror for Space Exoplanet Imaging with TOPS

Jun 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007lyot.confe..36a&link_type=abstract

Proceedings of the conference In the Spirit of Bernard Lyot: The Direct Detection of Planets and Circumstellar Disks in the 21s

Physics

Scientific paper

The Telescope to Observe Planetary systems (TOPS) will use an off-axis parabolic primary mirror and a PIAA coronagraph. A prototype demonstrator is planned with an advanced PIAA and a meter-class spherical mirror in place of the unobscured primary, allowing a simple but full system test to the 10^-10 contrast level needed to detect Earth-like planets. The primary will incorporate thermal actuation to correct low order modes, and a small MEMS mirror will be used for wavefront correction in the reformatted Gaussian pupil. The primary will be of standard lightweight honeycomb design and figured to high accuracy, but made of a ULE variant with very low but finite thermal expansion. Residual low order errors will be sensed on-orbit and nulled out by slightly varying the temperature of the back faceplate and individual rib elements. Radiative coupling to heated and cooled fingers in each cell will be used to for thermal control with no mechanical contact or stress. Preliminary analysis shows that Zernike modes up to the number of honeycomb cells should be correctable to better than 90% fidelity. Interferometric measurements of a honeycomb test mirror of borosilicate glass show a single cell influence function with 300 nm stroke and ~5 minute time constant.

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