The telescope readout electronics for the Gravity Probe B satellite

Demroff, H.P.; Babu, Sachidananda; Bye, Matthew; Coleman, K. L.; Das, Nirmalya Sankar; DeBra, D.; Ehrensberger, Paul; Farley, R.; Gill, D.; Goebel, J. H.; Jhabvala, M.; Kashani, A.; Romero, E.; Sullivan, Mark

doi:10.1051/jp4:1998338

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“…Figure 1 shows a cross-section of the vehicle in which the location of the telescope and other optical components can be seen. The readout system consisted of a set of eight silicon PIN photodiodes and specially fabricated low noise JFET preamplifiers (Kirschman et al 1992, Goldberg et al 1995, Demroff et al 1998and Wang 1998 operating at ∼72 K.…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

The design and performance of the Gravity Probe B telescope

Wang

Lipa

Gwo

et al. 2015

Class. Quantum Grav.

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The Gravity Probe B spacecraft was launched on 20 April 2004 to measure the geodetic and frame-dragging effects predicted by the theory of general relativity. A cryogenic optical telescope was used to establish the inertial reference frame for the measurements by tracking a reference or guide star. The motion of this star was independently checked by reference to background galaxies. With the mission now over, we describe the design, construction and evaluation of the optical and electrical performance of the telescope, comparing ground and flight results. We find that the pointing noise was sufficiently low to meet the mission requirements and in fair agreement with extrapolations from ground tests. Due to slight defocusing, the linear range of the telescope output was significantly wider than expected.

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Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%