JWST testbed telescope: a functionally accurate scaled version of the flight optical telescope element used to develop the flight wavefront sensing and control algorithm

Abstract

The Northrop-Grumman/Ball/Kodak team is building the JWST observatory that will be launched in 2011. To develop the flight wavefront sensing and control (WFS&C) algorithms and software, Ball is designing and building a 1 meter diameter, functionally accurate version of the JWST optical telescope element (OTE). This testbed telescope (TBT) will incorporate the same optical element control capability as the flight OTE. The secondary mirror will be controlled by a 6 degree of freedom (dof) hexapod and each of the 18 segmented primary mirror assemblies will have 6 dof hexapod control as well as radius of curvature adjustment capability. In addition to the highly adjustable primary and secondary mirrors, the TBT will include a rigid tertiary mirror, 2 fold mirrors (to direct light into the TBT) and a very stable supporting structure. The total telescope system configured residual wavefront error will be better than 175 nm RMS double pass. The primary and secondary mirror hexapod assemblies enable 5 nm piston resolution, 0.0014 arcsec tilt resolution, 100 nm translation resolution, and 0.04497 arcsec clocking resolution. The supporting structure (specifically the secondary mirror support structure) is designed to ensure that the primary mirror segments will not change their despace position relative to the secondary mirror (spaced > 1 meter apart) by greater than 500 nm within a one hour period of ambient clean room operation.