Formation Flying of Components of a Large Space Telescope

A conceptual space telescope having an aperture tens of meters wide and a focal length of hundreds of meters would be implemented as a group of six separate optical modules flying in formation: a primary-membrane-mirror module, a relay-mirror module, a focal-plane-assembly module containing a fast steering mirror and secondary and tertiary optics, a primary-mirror-figure-sensing module, a scanning-electron-beam module for controlling the shape of the primary mirror, and a sunshade module. Formation flying would make it unnecessary to maintain the required precise alignments among the modules by means of an impractically massive rigid structure. Instead, a control system operating in conjunction with a metrology system comprising optical and radio subsystems would control the firing of small thrusters on the separate modules to maintain the formation, thereby acting as a virtual rigid structure. The control system would utilize a combination of centralized- and decentralized-control methods according to a leader-follower approach.

The feasibility of the concept was demonstrated in computational simulations that showed that relative positions could be maintained to within a fraction of a millimeter and orientations to within several microradians.

This work was done by Edward Mettler, Marco Quadrelli, and William Breckenridge of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . NPO-45199