Wavefront sensing in space: flight demonstration II of the PICTURE sounding rocket payload
Name
019003_1.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.29 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
451e11a2bd959a499726ef7be189737c
Author(s)
Douglas, Ewan S
Mendillo, Christopher B
Cook, Timothy A
Cahoy, Kerri L
Chakrabarti, Supriya
Date Issued
2018
Journal
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
Publisher
SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). A NASA sounding rocket for high-contrast imaging with a visible nulling coronagraph, the Planet Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Rocket Experiment (PICTURE) payload, has made two suborbital attempts to observe the warm dust disk inferred around Epsilon Eridani. The first flight in 2011 demonstrated a 5 mas fine pointing system in space. The reduced flight data from the second launch, on November 25, 2015, presented herein, demonstrate active sensing of wavefront phase in space. Despite several anomalies in flight, postfacto reduction phase stepping interferometer data provide insight into the wavefront sensing precision and the system stability for a portion of the pupil. These measurements show the actuation of a 32 × 32-actuator microelectromechanical system deformable mirror. The wavefront sensor reached a median precision of 1.4 nm per pixel, with 95% of samples between 0.8 and 12.0 nm per pixel. The median system stability, including telescope and coronagraph wavefront errors other than tip, tilt, and piston, was 3.6 nm per pixel, with 95% of samples between 1.2 and 23.7 nm per pixel.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.4.1.019003
