Thin full shells oriented to the Lynx x-ray telescope: from design to breadboard realization

M. M. Civitani; G. Toso; S. Incorvaia; L. Lessio; G. Parodi; G. Pareschi; S. Basso; M. Ghigo; G. Vecchi

doi:10.1117/12.2530548

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16 September 2019 Thin full shells oriented to the Lynx x-ray telescope: from design to breadboard realization

M. M. Civitani, G. Toso, S. Incorvaia, L. Lessio, G. Parodi, G. Pareschi, S. Basso, M. Ghigo, G. Vecchi

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Proceedings Volume 11119, Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy IX; 111190T (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2530548
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2019, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Lynx is one of the four large strategic missions considered in the Astro2020 decadal survey. On the basis of Chandra heritage, Lynx is an X-ray Observatory with superb imaging capabilities (< 1 arcsec Half Energy Width, HEW) but with a larger throughput (2 m² effective area @ 1 keV). One of the technologies considered for the mirrors realization is based on monolithic glass (fused silica) shells, figured with direct polishing technique. The simplicity of the full shell concept is quite attractive. The complete optics module could be composed of few hundreds of parts, instead of several thousands of pieces. As a drawback, to be compliant with the mass budget, the shell thickness should be maintained very small even for larger mirror shell (<4 mm for mirror shells up of 3 m diameter). Starting from the opto-mechanical design of the Lynx mirror assembly based on this approach, a technology development roadmap is going to funded by ASI and realized by INAF/OAB. In this paper we discuss the work plan and the advancements obtained in the realization of a new breadboard, based on a fused silica semi-shell.

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M. M. Civitani, G. Toso, S. Incorvaia, L. Lessio, G. Parodi, G. Pareschi, S. Basso, M. Ghigo, and G. Vecchi "Thin full shells oriented to the Lynx x-ray telescope: from design to breadboard realization", Proc. SPIE 11119, Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy IX, 111190T (16 September 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2530548

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