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Demonstration of a Segment Alignment Maintenance System on a Seven-Segment Sub-Array of the Hobby-Eberly TelescopeNASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in collaboration with Blue Line Engineering of Colorado Springs, Colorado, is developing a Segment Alignment Maintenance System (SAMS) for McDonald Observatory's Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). The SAMS shall sense motions of the 91 primary mirror segments and send corrections to HET's primary mirror controller as the mirror segments misalign due to thermo-elastic deformations of the mirror support structure. The SAMS consists of inductive edge sensors supplemented by inclinometers for global radius of curvature sensing. All measurements are sent to the SAMS computer where mirror motion corrections are calculated. In October 2000, a prototype SAMS was installed on a seven-segment cluster of the HET. Subsequent testing has shown that the SAMS concept and architecture are a viable practical approach to maintaining HET's primary mirror figure, or the figure of any large segmented telescope. This paper gives a functional description of the SAMS sub-array components and presents test data to characterize the performance of the sub-array SAMS.
Document ID
20010075155
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Rakoczy, John
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
Whitaker, Ann F.
Date Acquired
August 20, 2013
Publication Date
January 22, 2001
Subject Category
Astronomy
Meeting Information
Meeting: Optomechanical Design and Engineering 2001 Conference
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: July 26, 2001
End Date: August 3, 2001
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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