The NASA Telescope Technology Program has a goal of developing and demonstrating design, materials, processing, fabrication and test technology to enable lightweight, low cost instrument and telescope systems for future NASA missions and commercial applications. This is a new program in FY'94, the initial emphasis is on integrated ultra-light optical instrument systems and low mass, low temperature infrared telescope systems.
In a remarkable example of faster, better, cheaper engineering, JPL has
developed a state-of-the-art Cryogenic Optical Test Facility (COTF).
The COTF advanced from
concept development to operation in 12 months. The total cost was
$800K, provided jointly by this program, OSS and JPL institutional funding.
JPL minimized development costs by utilizing existing hardware
(interferometer, vibration isolation legs, crane, pumps, etc.)
from previous programs whenever possible. Janis Research developed
the large helium test Dewar.
The optical axis of the COTF is oriented vertically and optics up to
1.3 meter in diameter can be tested via phase shifting interferometry in either
the "looking up" or "looking down" orientation. For more information see the
STTF
- SIRTF Telescope Test Facility from the
Low
Temperature Science & Engineering Group at
JPL.
A 50 centimeter diameter beryllium
test mirror developed by the Telescope Technology Program last year and
characterized at liquid helium temperature in the small test facility
at the Ames Research Center is being utilized to checkout and calibrate
and the COTF. In initial tests interferometric data was in
excellent agreement with that obtained previously.
none at the moment...
Created August 24, 1994. Last update: August 30, 1996. Maintained by Gordon Johnston
Gordon.Johnston@hq.nasa.govThe world wide web uniform resource locator (URL) for this page is:
http://ranier.oact.hq.nasa.gov/Sensors_page/Optics/TeleOV.html