Recent Developments in Precision High Strain Composite Hinges for Deployable Space Telescopes

Abstract

Future large space-based telescopes will require precision mechanisms for deployment or alignment after they reach orbit. This research effort seeks to develop deployable primary-mirror telescope technologies that leverage recent advances in mirror phasing, actuation and deployable structure technologies. One way to obtain a precise deployed position of the optical components is with structures incorporating precision High-Strain Composite (HSC) hinges. This paper focuses on characterizing the deployment precision of individual HSC hinges and of a support frame utilizing multiple HSC hinges. Measurements of certain individual HSC hinges demonstrate position precision as low as 0.6 µm and angular precision as low as 6 µrad. A deployable frame concept produced axial precision of 0.2 µm, piston precision of 2.3 µm and angular precision of 6.3 µrad. A few modifications to the frame test setup are proposed that may improve the piston precision results.

Review on thermal and mechanical challenges in the development of deployable space optics

“…The results of the experiments on the tape spring hinge reported in Ref. 108 show that tape spring hinges can achieve Fig. 13 Artist impression of the Lidar telescope, which was used as baseline by the DOME project.…”

A multifunctional high strain composite (HSC) hinge for deployable in-space optomechanics

“…The HSC hinges presented in this work are sized for a Cube-Sat form factor, with a 0.7 m deployable sparsely filled primary mirror array. A schematic of the baseline sparseaperture design for the Deployable In-Space Coherent Imaging Telescope (DISCIT) [6,8,9] is shown in figure 1(a). The primary mirror segments will be deployed and coarsely positioned using HSC hinges with micrometer-level repeatability, as shown in figures 1(b) & 1(c) in the deployed and stowed states respectively.…”

“…Once the locations of the actuators were selected the MFCs were bonded to a HSC hinge using a vacuum bagging process [8,9]. The completed multifunctional HSC hinge after the bonding of the MFCs is shown in figure 7 in the testing apparatus.…”