Integrated modeling approach for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission

Marie B. Levine; Gregory Moore; Scott A. Basinger; Andrew Kissil; Eric Bloemhof; Steven Gunter

doi:10.1117/12.553813

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16 September 2004 Integrated modeling approach for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission

Marie B. Levine, Gregory Moore, Scott A. Basinger, Andrew Kissil, Eric Bloemhof, Steven Gunter

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Proceedings Volume 5497, Modeling and Systems Engineering for Astronomy; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.553813
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2004, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Abstract

Because of the complexity of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) design concepts, the project will rely heavily on the use of engineering and science simulations to predict on-orbit performance. Furthermore, current understanding of these missions indicates that the 3m to 8m class optical systems need to be as stable as picometers in wavefront and sub-milli arcsec in pointing. These extremely small requirements impose on the models a level of predictive accuracy heretofore never achieved, especially in the area of microgravity effects, material property accuracy, thermal solution convergence, and all other second order modeling effects typically ignored. New modeling tools and analysis paradigms are developed which emphasize computational accuracy and fully integrated analytical simulations. The process is demonstrated on sample problems using the TPF Coronagraph design concept. The TPF project is also planning a suite of testbeds through which various aspects of the models and simulations will be verified.

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Marie B. Levine, Gregory Moore, Scott A. Basinger, Andrew Kissil, Eric Bloemhof, and Steven Gunter "Integrated modeling approach for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission", Proc. SPIE 5497, Modeling and Systems Engineering for Astronomy, (16 September 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.553813

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