A Silicon Carbide (SiC) based wide field of view Pointing Mirror Assembly (PMA) has been developed to provide two axis line-of-sight control for a fixed, space based imaging sensor. Thermal modeling has been completed in order to project the excellent thermal stability anticipated from the SiC PMA, and closed loop servo testing of the hardware has been conducted in order to quantify the bandwidth associated with line-of-sight control. In addition to the system level testing the SiC mirror substrate itself has been tested for thermal stability. We also report on results obtained with a novel polishing technique which has been applied in order to allow optical finishing of the two-phased Reaction Bonded (RB) SiC mirror substrate without the need for Silicon or SiC claddings.
The detection of changes in volume, e.g., in expansivity or aging measurements, are often translated into mercury column height within a glass capillary. We propose a capacitive technique for measuring the meniscus position using a cylindrical capacitor with mercury as the inner electrode, the capillary material as the dielectric, and a metal coat covering the outside surface of the capillary as the second electrode. The measured capacitance changes linearly with meniscus height, as long as the top mercury level remains within the range of the outer electrode. With the demonstrated noise level of 48 nm for our preliminary setup, meniscus height changes beyond 100 nm can be observed via the capacitance.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.