Low-Areal Density Meniscus Telescope Primary

The space surveillance community needs lightweight, large aperture optical systems that can be quickly adapted to new or changing requirements - agile response. Large aperture systems require large, very precise, very stable, ground testable opticalsurfaces. Current State of the Art primary mirror technology is heavy and has limited mirror shape control. Passive, monolithic mirrors such as the Hubble Space Telescope have an areal density of 250-Kg/m2. In order to substantially improve theperformance of primary mirrors, an active, thin meniscus mirror can be substituted. The meniscus mirror features a thin facesheet mounted onto an array of actuators directly attached to a stiff reaction structure. This configuration can reduce the arealdensity to 10-Kg/m2. Mirror design and materials limit areal density and aperture size. Xinetics proposes designing a 30-cm primary mirror that can be used in small, lightweight imaging satellites. This technology provides a very lightweight system withactive control of the mirror. The active control can reduce the polishing requirements by correcting for errors. Also, the reaction-bonded silicon carbide fabricated by Xinetics is fabricated with mold technology lending itself easily to mass productiontechniques. Each year there is a growing need for advanced imaging systems for both defense and spaced-base imaging systems. Programs such as ABL and SBL on the government side will require light, fast, inexpensive components to meet the needs of a largefleet of ABL airplanes or SBL satellites. For either flight system, weight and performance are important parameters in the overall system design. Small, complete, silicon carbide telescopes will serve to provide that type of capability. These techniquescould be applied to fabricated somewhat larger monolithic primaries that would be needed for programs such as this. In addition, small tactical imaging systems would benefit greatly. Satellite could be built for a fraction of what an imaging system costsnow and be available quickly if tensions around the world increased.This type of technology would also serve space applications. NASA continues to develop orbital imaging systems for astronomical and earth resources applications. Moderate size imaging systems could be used for specific astronomical applications and alsofor earth resources applications. Again, a system that could readily correct inherent aberrations would offer a greater range of applications and provide significantly improved results over current systems. The systems would be less expensive to fabricate,maintain, and produce superior results.