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Preliminary error budgets for the pointing knowledge, control, and stability of the SIM spacecraft are constructed using the specifications of commercial off-the-shelf attitude determination sensors, attitude control actuators, and other spacecraft capabilities that had been demonstrated in past missions.
The Micro-Arcsecond Metrology (MAM) experiment is one of a family of ground-based testbeds that will demonstrate critical technologies for SIM, the Space Interferometry Mission.
Optical and infrared interferometry will open new vistas for astronomy over the next decade.
Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) PlanetQuest is part of the NASA Astronomical Search for Origins (ASO) program. It will use a Michelson Interferometer to locate extrasolar planets, among other objectives. The spacecraft's subsystems, temperature requirements, and thermal control approach are discussed. The current SIM thermal design is analyzed using a Milli-Kelvin approach and appears to meet temperature stability requirements on the OOPCC optic. SIM absolute temperature requirements are met through the robustness of the thermal design (i.e., PIC control).
Optical and infrared interferometry will open new vistas for astronomy over the next decade. Space based interferometers, operating unfettered by the Earth's atmosphere, will offer the greatest scientific payoff. They also present the greatest technological challenge: laser metrology systems must perform with sub-nanometer precision; mechanical vibrations must be controlled to nanometers requiring orders of magnitude distrubance rejection; a multitude of actuators and sensors must operate flawlessly and in concert.
The design and testing of a structural system were implemented to hold the optics of the planned Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) at positions and orientations characterized by vibrational translation and rotation errors of no more than a few nanometers or a few milliarcseconds, respectively. Much of the effort was devoted to a test bed for verifying the predicted behavior of a vibration- isolation structural subsystem working together with an active control system for positioning and orienting the SIM optics. There was considerable emphasis on the vibration-isolation subsystem, which was passive and comprised two stages. The main sources of vibration were six reaction wheels in an assembly denoted the "backpack." The first vibration-isolation stage consisted of hexapod isolator mounts - one for each reaction wheel - characterized by a natural vibration frequency of 10 Hz. The second stage was a set of three beams, disposed between the backpack and the structure that held the SIM optics, that were flexured such that they transmitted only bending loads, with a natural vibrational frequency and damping of about 5 Hz and 4 percent, respectively. Preliminary test results were presented and characterized as demonstrating the effectiveness of the two-stage vibration-isolation design.
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is a space-based 10 m baseline Michelson interferometer. Planned for launch in 2005 aboard a Delta III launch vehicle, or equivalent, its primary objective is to measure the positions of stars and other celestial objects with an unprecedented accuracy of 4 micro arc seconds. With such an instrument, tremendous advancement can be expected in our understanding of stellar and galactic dynamics. Using triangulation from opposite sides of the orbit around the sun (i.e. by using parallax) one can measure the distance to any observable object in our galaxy. By directly measuring the orbital wobble of nearby stars, the mass and orbit of planets can be determined over a wide range of parameters. The distribution of velocity within nearby galaxies will be measurable. Observations of these and other objects will improve the calibration of distance estimators by more than an order of magnitude. This will permit a much better determination of the Hubble Constant as well as improving our overall understanding of the evolution of the universe. SIM has undergone several transformations, especially over the past year and a half since the start of Phase A. During this phase of a project, it is desirable to perform system-level trade studies, so the substantial evolution of the design that has occurred is quite appropriate. Part of the trade-off process has addressed two major underlying architectures: SIM Classic; and Son of SIM. The difference between these two architectures is related to the overall arrangement of the optical elements and the associated metrology system. Several different configurations have been developed for each architecture. Each configuration is the result of design choices that are influenced by many competing considerations. Some of the more important aspects will be discussed. The Space Interferometry Mission has some extremely challenging goals: millikelvin thermal stability, nanometer stabilization of optics, picometer measurement of wavefront, and others. In order to meet these goals, a significant amount of technological development is required. Although there has been a program operating for about a decade developing technologies specifically to address the challenges of space-based interferometry, there still remains a tremendous effort to achieve the incredible accuracy required of SIM. The projected viability of some of these areas has influenced design choices during the evolution of the many configurations that have been developed. For instance, the perceived complexity of the IR laser metrology system used to measure and control the positions of key optical elements was the strongest discriminator between the two architectures, and led to a decision to select SOS rather than Classic in early 1998. More recently, an appreciation of the sensitivity to beam-walk within the SOS architecture is forcing a reconsideration of that decision. At the time of submission of this abstract, there is some hope that a full-aperture metrology system may alleviate this issue. In addition to describing the current configuration of SIM, the influence of a few selected areas on the evolution of the configuration will be discussed.
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will perform global astrometry (full sky), local wide-angle (15 degree) and narrow-angle (1 degree) observations to search extra-solar planets, and can calibrate stellar and galactic evolution theories. The astrometric accuracy of the SIM mission depends on spectral characteristics of the optics, detectors and targets. This paper will discuss the photometric throughput of the SIM instrument, and analyze effects of wavefront errors, optical mismatches and control biases as a function of wavelength. The color dependence models of the instrument optics including mirrors, lenses, field-stop and beam-splitter are presented. The performances of different detectors with a variety of coatings are compared. A model of the SIM fringe spectrometer is created. For early and late types of stars, brightness dependency errors are analyzed for different combinations of optics and detectors. Visibility loss due to imperfect optics is investigated in detail. Based on the models of instrument and estimated visibilities, the astrometric accuracies for various kinds of stars are evaluated. It is important to emphasize that not only light sources, mirrors, lenses, field stop and detectors are all wavelength dependent, but also fringe visibility loss, wavefront error, optics control error, etc. are all a function of wavelengths. For the first time the estimate of SIM performance is based on spectral analysis of all factors above, rather than monochromatic approximations of detected fringes, or simply adopted constants. This paper summarizes the astrometric accuracies for a wide range of stars and various combinations of optical design and detector configurations. It has been verified that SIM has astrometric accuracy of about 4 μas for targets with different spectra.
Future space-based optical interferometers, such as the Space Interferometer Mission Planet Quest (SIM), require thermal stability of the optical wavefront to the level of picometers in order to produce astrometric data at the micro-arc-second level. In SIM, the internal path of the interferometer will be measured with a small metrology beam whereas the starlight fringe position is estimated from a large concentric annular beam. To achieve the micro-arc-second observation goal for SIM, it is necessary to maintain the optical path difference between the central and the outer annulus portions of the wavefront of the front-end telescope optics to a few tens of picometers. The Thermo-Opto-Mecha nical testbed (TOM3) was developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to measure thermally induced optical deformations of a full-size flight-like beam compressor and siderostat, the two largest optics on SIM, in flight-like thermal environments. A Common Path Heterodyne Interferometer (COPHI) developed at JPL was used for the fine optical path difference measurement as the metrology sensor. The system was integrated inside a large vacuum chamber in order to mitigate the atmospheric and thermal disturbances. The siderostat was installed in a temperature-controlled thermal shroud inside the vacuum chamber, creating a flight-like thermal environment. Detailed thermal and structural models of the test articles (siderostat and compressor) were also developed for model prediction and correlation of the thermal deformations. Experimental data shows SIM required thermal stability of the test articles and good agreement with the model predictions.
'SIM PlanetQuest will exploit the classical measuring tool of astrometry (interferometry) with unprecedented precision to make dramatic advances in many areas of astronomy and astrophysics'(1). In order to obtain interferometric data two large steerable mirrors, or Siderostats, are used to direct starlight into the interferometer. A gimbaled mechanism actuated by linear actuators is chosen to meet the unprecedented pointing and angle tracking requirements of SIM. A group of JPL engineers designed, built, and tested a linear ballscrew actuator capable of performing submicron incremental steps for 10 years of continuous operation. Precise, zero backlash, closed loop pointing control requirements, lead the team to implement a ballscrew actuator with a direct drive DC motor and a precision piezo brake. Motor control commutation using feedback from a precision linear encoder on the ballscrew output produced an unexpected incremental step size of 20 nm over a range of 120 mm, yielding a dynamic range of 6,000,000:1. The results prove linear nanometer positioning requires no gears, levers, or hydraulic converters. Along the way many lessons have been learned and will subsequently be shared.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has built several optical interferometers using a common software framework developed for this purpose. The heart of this framework is the Realtime Control (RTC) software product. RTC has evolved from its initial implementation to include a powerful dynamic configuration capability and to use Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) technology for commanding and telemetry. This paper describes the current implementation of this toolkit.
The Space Interferometer Mission (SIM), scheduled for launch in 2009, is a space-born visible light stellar interferometer capable of micro-arcsecond-level astrometry. The Micro-Arcsecond Metrology testbed (MAM) is the ground-based testbed that incorporates all the functionalities of SIM minus the telescope, for mission-enabling technology development and verification. MAM employs a laser heterodyne metrology system using the Sub-Aperture Vertex-to-Vertex (SAVV) concept. In this paper, we describe the development and modification of the SAVV metrology launchers and the metrology instrument electronics, precision alignments and pointing control, locating cyclic error sources in the MAM testbed and methods to mitigate the cyclic errors, as well as the performance under the MAM performance metrics.
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is the next major space mission in NASA's Origins program after SIRTF. The SIM architecture uses three Michelson interferometers in low-earth orbit to provide 4 microarcsecond precision absolute astrometric measurements on approx. 40,000 stars. SIM will also provide synthesis imaging in the visible waveband to a resolution of 10 milliarcsecond, and interferometric nulling to a depth of 10(exp -4). A near-IR (1-2 micron) capability is being considered. Many key technologies will be demonstrated by SIM that will be carried over directly or can be readily scaled to future Origins missions such as TPF. The SIM spacecraft will carry a triple Michelson interferometer with baselines in the 10 meter range. Two interferometers act as high precision trackers, providing attitude information at all time, while the third one conducts the science observations. Ultra-accurate laser metrology and active systems monitor the systematic errors and to control the instrument vibrations in order to reach the 4 microarcsecond level on wide-angle measurements. SIM will produce a wealth of new astronomical data. With an absolute positional precision of 4 microarcsecond, SIM will improve on the best currently available measures (the Hipparcos catalog) by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, providing parallaxes accurate to 10% and transverse velocities to 0.2 km/s anywhere in the Galaxy, to stars as faint as 20th magnitude. With the addition of radial velocities, knowledge of the 6-dimension phase space for objects of interest will allow us to attack a wide array of previously inaccessible problems such as: search for planets down to few earth masses; calibration of stellar luminosities and by means of standard candles, calibration of the cosmic distance scale; detecting perturbations due to spiral arms, disk warps and central bar in our galaxy; probe of the gravitational potential of the Galaxy, several kiloparsecs out of the galactic plane; synthesis imaging of circumstellar disks around young stellar objects; imaging the narrow-line regions of AGNs in the optical; direct distance determination of a half dozen nearby spiral galaxies using rotational kinematics, thereby sidestepping reddening and metallicity issues in the calibration of distance estimators like Tully-Fisher; imaging exozodiacal dust disks (when operating in its nulling mode, SIM will be sensitive, at a distance of (beta) Pic (20 pc), to scales ranging from 0.2 to 5 AU).
SIM System Testbed 3 (STB3) features three optical interferometers sharing a common baseline, as a dynamic representation of the SIM instrument. An artificial star feeding the interferometers is installed on a separate optics bench. All three interferometers use photons captured by avalanche photo diodes (APDs) to measure the position and quality of fringes, and additional pointing precision is achieved by fast steering mirrors (FSMs) that keep the star images centered on the beam combining optics using a CCD camera. Each interferometer uses internal metrology to measure changes in its optical pathlength. External metrology beams measure changes in the baseline vector. This system acquires and tracks white light fringes with one interferometer, while the other two acquire and track laser light fringes representing the bright guide stars that will be used by SIM. The white light source represents a dim star that cannot supply enough photons for the Science interferometer to lock onto fringes in closed-loop mode; instead it operates open-loop, using pathlength corrections fed to it from the two guide interferometers and the external metrology subsystem to reject disturbances and maintain the fringes. This tracking mode is known as Pathlength Feed Forward (PFF). The precise real-time behavior required to achieve this result is implemented by a complex set of interacting software control loops. This paper describes how these loops take advantage of the benefits of the RTC Core architecture, and how they work together to accomplish STB3's objectives.
The SIM-Lite astrometric interferometer will search for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. In this search the interferometer will monitor the astrometric position of candidate stars relative to nearby reference stars over the course of a 5 year mission. The elemental measurement is the angle between a target star and a reference star. This is a two-step process, in which the interferometer will each time need to use its controllable optics to align the starlight in the two arms with each other and with the metrology beams. The sensor for this alignment is an angle tracking CCD camera. Various constraints in the design of the camera subject it to systematic alignment errors when observing a star of one spectrum compared with a start of a different spectrum. This effect is called a Color Dependent Centroid Shift (CDCS) and has been studied extensively with SIM-Lite's SCDU testbed. Here we describe results from the simulation and testing of this error in the SCDU testbed, as well as effective ways that it can be reduced to acceptable levels.
Topics include: ISS Ammonia Leak Detection Through X-Ray Fluorescence; A System for Measuring the Sway of the Vehicle Assembly Building; Fast, High-Precision Readout Circuit for Detector Arrays; Victim Simulator for Victim Detection Radar; Hydrometeor Size Distribution Measurements by Imaging the Attenuation of a Laser Spot; Quasi-Linear Circuit; High-Speed, High-Resolution Time-to-Digital Conversion; Li-Ion Battery and Supercapacitor Hybrid Design for Long Extravehicular Activities; Ultrasonic Low-Friction Containment Plate for Thermal and Ultrasonic Stir Weld Processes; High-Powered, Ultrasonically Assisted Thermal Stir Welding; Next-Generation MKIII Lightweight HUT/Hatch Assembly; Centrifugal Sieve for Gravity-Level-Independent Size; Segregation of Granular Materials; Ion Exchange Technology Development in Support of the Urine Processor Assembly; Nickel-Graphite Composite Compliant Interface and/or Hot Shoe Material; UltraSail CubeSat Solar Sail Flight Experiment; Mechanism for Deploying a Long, Thin-Film Antenna From a Rover; Counterflow Regolith Heat Exchanger; Acquisition and Retaining Granular Samples via a Rotating Coring Bit; Very-Low-Cost, Rugged Vacuum System; Medicine Delivery Device With Integrated Sterilization and Detection; FRET-Aptamer Assays for Bone Marker Assessment, C-Telopeptide, Creatinine, and Vitamin D; Multimode Directional Coupler for Utilization of Harmonic Frequencies from TWTAs; Dual-Polarization, Multi-Frequency Antenna Array for use with Hurricane Imaging Radiometer; Complementary Barrier Infrared Detector (CBIRD) Contact Methods; Autonomous Control of Space Nuclear Reactors; High-Power, High-Speed Electro-Optic Pockels Cell Modulator; Covariance Analysis Tool (G-CAT) for Computing Ascent, Descent, and Landing Errors; Enigma Version 12; Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) Shield Ballistic Limit Analysis Program; Spitzer Telemetry Processing System; Planetary Protection Bioburden Analysis Program; Wing Leading Edge RCC Rapid Response Damage Prediction Tool (IMPACT2); ISSM: Ice Sheet System Model; Automated Loads Analysis System (ATLAS); Integrated Main Propulsion System Performance Reconstruction Process/Models. Phoenix Telemetry Processor; Contact Graph Routing Enhancements Developed in ION for DTN; GFEChutes Lo-Fi; Advanced Strategic and Tactical Relay Request Management for the Mars Relay Operations Service; Software for Generating Troposphere Corrections for InSAR Using GPS and Weather Model Data; Ionospheric Specifications for SAR Interferometry (ISSI); Implementation of a Wavefront-Sensing Algorithm; Sally Ride EarthKAM - Automated Image Geo-Referencing Using Google Earth Web Plug-In; Trade Space Specification Tool (TSST) for Rapid Mission Architecture (Version 1.2); Acoustic Emission Analysis Applet (AEAA) Software; Memory-Efficient Onboard Rock Segmentation; Advanced Multimission Operations System (ATMO); Robot Sequencing and Visualization Program (RSVP); Automating Hyperspectral Data for Rapid Response in Volcanic Emergencies; Raster-Based Approach to Solar Pressure Modeling; Space Images for NASA JPL Android Version; Kinect Engineering with Learning (KEWL); Spacecraft 3D Augmented Reality Mobile App; MPST Software: grl_pef_check; Real-Time Multimission Event Notification System for Mars Relay; SIM_EXPLORE: Software for Directed Exploration of Complex Systems; Mobile Timekeeping Application Built on Reverse-Engineered JPL Infrastructure; Advanced Query and Data Mining Capabilities for MaROS; Jettison Engineering Trajectory Tool; MPST Software: grl_suppdoc; PredGuid+A: Orion Entry Guidance Modified for Aerocapture; Planning Coverage Campaigns for Mission Design and Analysis: CLASP for DESDynl; and Space Place Prime.
Optical interferometry will open new vistas for astronomy over the next decade. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM-PlanetQuest), operating unfettered by the Earth's atmosphere, will offer unprecedented astrometric precision that promises the discovery of Earth-analog extra-solar planets as well as a wealth of important astrophysics. Results from SIM will permit the determination of stellar masses to accuracies of 2% or better for objects ranging from brown dwarfs through main sequence stars to evolved white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Studies of star clusters will yield age determinations and internal dynamics. Microlensing measurements will present the mass spectrum of the Milky Way internal to the Sun while proper motion surveys will show the Sun's orbital radius and speed. Studies of the Galaxy's halo component and companion dwarf galaxies permit the determination of the Milky Way's mass distribution, including its Dark Matter component and the mass distribution and Dark Matter component of the Local Group. Cosmology benefits from precision (1-2%) determination of distances to Cepheid and RR Lyrae standard candles. The emission mechanism of supermassive black holes will be investigated. Finally, radio and optical celestial reference frames will be tied together by an improvement of two orders of magnitude. Optical interferometers present severe technological challenges. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with the support of Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (LM ATC) and Northrop Grumman Space Technology (NGST), has addressed these challenges with a technology development program that is now complete. The requirements for SIM have been satisfied, based on outside peer review, using a series of laboratory tests and appropriate computer simulations: laser metrology systems perform with 10 picometer precision; mechanical vibrations have been controlled to nanometers, demonstrating orders of magnitude disturbance rejection; and knowledge of component positions throughout the whole test assembly has been demonstrated to the required picometer level. Technology transfer to the SIM flight team is now well along.