|
The UV1 optical design is based on a classical Offner-type spectrometer which has been adapted to employ freeform optics and an aspheric off-axis grating. It generates a magnification of 0.4. A structural, monolithic housing has been designed that is optimized for stability, accessibility and integration of optical components. To realize a thermo-mechanically stable construction, both housing and mirror bodies are built from aluminum. Four out of five mirrors have a dedicated black coating for absorbing out-of-band light. For further stray light suppression, a graded short-pass filter is employed on the last optical element just in front of the detector. Performance verification of a standalone spectrometer without telescope, entrance slit, limiting aperture stop and flight detector is a major challenge. For this verification TNO developed dedicated ground support equipment that will be used under both ambient and vacuum conditions; a dedicated optical stimulus that mimics the illumination from the telescope in terms of pointing and NA, a Slit Assembly that mimics the homogenizer entrance slit and a Test Detector to determine the image plane and to measure the optical performance with high accuracy. At the time of writing this article, the first (proto-flight) model has been aligned and performance verification is about to start. |
|
|
