TY - JOUR
T1 - The versatile CubeSat telescope
T2 - UV/Optical/IR Space Telescopes and Instruments: Innovative Technologies and Concepts X 2021
AU - Ashcraft, Jaren N.
AU - Douglas, Ewan S.
AU - Kim, Daewook
AU - Smith, George A.
AU - Cahoy, Kerri
AU - Connors, Tom
AU - Derby, Kevin Z.
AU - Gasho, Victor
AU - Gonzales, Kerry
AU - Guthery, Charlotte E.
AU - Kim, Geon Hee
AU - Sauve, Corwyn
AU - Serra, Paul
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Zemax for the early access to their STAR analysis feature. This research made use of community-developed core Python packages, including: Numpy,12 Matplotlib,13 SciPy,14 Astropy,15 and Jupyter, IPython Interactive Computing architecture.16,17 Portions of this work were supported by the Arizona Board of Regents Technology Research Initiative Fund (TRIF). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 SPIE.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The design of a CubeSat telescope for academic research purposes must balance complicated optical and structural designs with cost to maximize performance in extreme environments. Increasing the CubeSat size (eg. 6U to 12U) will increase the potential optical performance, but the cost will increase in kind. Recent developments in diamond-turning have increased the accessibility of aspheric aluminum mirrors, enabling a cost-effective regime of well-corrected nanosatellite telescopes. We present an all-aluminum versatile CubeSat telescope (VCT) platform that optimizes performance, cost, and schedule at a relatively large 95 mm aperture and 0.4 degree diffraction limited full field of view stablized by MEMS fine-steering modules. This study features a new design tool that permits easy characterization of performance degradation as a function of spacecraft thermal and structural disturbances. We will present details including the trade between on- and off-axis implementations of the VCT, thermal stability requirements and finite-element analysis, and launch survival considerations. The VCT is suitable for a range of CubeSat borne applications, which provides an affordable platform for astronomy, Earth-imaging, and optical communications.
AB - The design of a CubeSat telescope for academic research purposes must balance complicated optical and structural designs with cost to maximize performance in extreme environments. Increasing the CubeSat size (eg. 6U to 12U) will increase the potential optical performance, but the cost will increase in kind. Recent developments in diamond-turning have increased the accessibility of aspheric aluminum mirrors, enabling a cost-effective regime of well-corrected nanosatellite telescopes. We present an all-aluminum versatile CubeSat telescope (VCT) platform that optimizes performance, cost, and schedule at a relatively large 95 mm aperture and 0.4 degree diffraction limited full field of view stablized by MEMS fine-steering modules. This study features a new design tool that permits easy characterization of performance degradation as a function of spacecraft thermal and structural disturbances. We will present details including the trade between on- and off-axis implementations of the VCT, thermal stability requirements and finite-element analysis, and launch survival considerations. The VCT is suitable for a range of CubeSat borne applications, which provides an affordable platform for astronomy, Earth-imaging, and optical communications.
KW - CubeSat
KW - Finite element analaysis
KW - Optical design
KW - Polarization
KW - Telescope
KW - Thermal
KW - Trade study
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85117193023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85117193023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2594884
DO - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2594884
M3 - Conference article
SN - 0277-786X
VL - 11819
JO - Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
JF - Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
M1 - 1181904
Y2 - 1 August 2021 through 5 August 2021
ER -