TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rausch, Peter
A1  - Verpoort, Sven
A1  - Wittrock, Ulrich
T1  - Unimorph deformable mirror for space telescopes: design and manufacturing
JF  - Opt. Expr.
N2  - Large space telescopes made of deployable and lightweight structures suffer from aberrations caused by thermal deformations, gravitational release, and alignment errors which occur during the deployment procedure. An active optics system would allow on-site correction of wave-front errors, and ease the requirements on thermal and mechanical stability of the optical train. In the course of a project funded by the European Space Agency we have developed and manufactured a unimorph deformable mirror based on piezoelectric actuation. The mirror is able to work in space environment and is designed to correct for large aberrations of low order with high surface fidelity. This paper discusses design, manufacturing and performance results of the deformable mirror.
KW  - Active or adaptive optics
KW  - Telescopes
KW  - Space optics
KW  - Space instrumentation
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:836-opus-8227
VL  - 23
SP  - 19469
EP  - 19477
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rausch, Peter
A1  - Verpoort, Sven
A1  - Wittrock, Ulrich
T1  - Unimorph deformable mirror for space telescopes: environmental testing
JF  - Opt. Expr.
N2  - We have developed and manufactured a unimorph deformable mirror for space telescopes based on piezoelectric actuation. The mirror features 44 actuators, has an aperture of 50 mm, and is designed to reproduce low-order Zernike modes with a stroke of several tens of µm. We assessed the space compliance by operating the mirror in thermal vacuum, and exposing it to random and sinusoidal vibrations, as well as to ionizing irradiation. Additionally, the operational life time and the laser power handling capability were tested. The mirror was successfully operated in thermal vacuum at 100 K. We report on the conducted tests and the methods used to evaluate the mirror´s performance, and discuss the compliance with the demanded requirements
KW  - active or adaptive optics
KW  - telescopes thermal effects vibration analysis
KW  - radiation
KW  - space optics
KW  - space instrumentation
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hbz:836-opus-8530
VL  - 24
SP  - 1528
EP  - 1542
ER  -