The FGS is one of two scientific instruments on board the ESA ARIEL space telescope, which ESA plans to launch in 2029. The aim of the mission is to characterize the atmospheres of several hundred different exoplanets. The FGS is an opto-electronic instrument – a photometer and a near infra-red spectrometer. Although FGS stands for Fine Guidance System, in fact it has two main goals: to deliver scientific data of observed exoplanets, precisely speaking, their atmospheres, and to support the spacecraft’s AOCS with very precise pointing and guiding towards observation objects. This paper presents an overview of the current FGS design and implementation. The instrument is in the middle step between successfully passed iPDR and upcoming iCDR. Up to now, the team successfully built a prototype of the instrument, and is working on the manufacturing of the engineering and engineering-qualification models.
Within this paper, we describe architecture and functionality of the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), one of two instruments on-board ESA ARIEL mission. We present a conceptual design, development models, related challenges, and opportunities as seen at iPDR milestone.
Remote sensing Fourier transform spectrometers are required to be robust and portable. Introducing moving flat mirrors instead of cube corner refractors simplifies the spectrometer design and makes it more compact. Flat mirrors, however, introduce additional angular errors. We analyze the effect of tilted beams on spectral line shape and derive a mathematic equation for this effect based on the diffraction theory. A rough estimate equation for the intensity of two interfering beams based on the amount of tilt between them is presented. A case of a varying amount of tilt during moving mirror scanning is presented and various forms of mirror misalignment are analyzed.
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