Field-balancing alignment of the secondary mirror of space telescope using a self-calibrated model

Abstract

In-orbit alignment of the secondary mirror (SM) of deployable space telescopes is crucial for high-resolution imaging. Traditional alignment methods, which typically involve dedicated wavefront sensors or numerous iterations to optimize a metric function, are not well-suited for space applications. In this paper, an improved model-based SM alignment method is proposed. The term model refers to the relationship between misalignments and a metric function. The improved method offers two advantages over the previous model-based method in [12]. Firstly, our method allows for self-calibration of the model without the need for an additional wavefront sensor, which greatly simplifies the calibration process. Secondly, our method enables field-balancing alignment of the SM with several correction cycles. The exposure number is only six in one correction cycle and is regardless of the number of FOV sampling points, making it highly efficient for telescopes with a large FOV. The feasibility and performance of our method are verified by simulation. A comparison with existing methods is also given to show the advantages of our method in convergence speed and accuracy.