Multidisciplinary System Optimization of a Spacecraft Interferometer Testbed

Abstract

This paper applies existing multidisciplinary system design optimization (MSDO) techniques (DOE, gradient based optimization, sensitivity analysis and heuristic techniques) to a spacecraft interferometer testbed in order to minimize the pointing error while keeping a minimum optical pathlength. It is shown that minimizing pointing error does not necessarily drive the optical pathlength. Also insights (such as pointing error sensitivities to particular design variables) are revealed using MSDO techniques. A comparison on the appropriateness of different optimization techniques (gradient search, heuristic search) as applied to this problem is performed.