The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) is currently developing GrainCams as a candidate payload for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). GrainCams consists of two instruments to be mounted on a rover: LevCam, which observes levitating dust near the lunar surface, and SurfCam, designed to observe lunar regolith. Over the past two years, LevCam and SurfCam have been engaged in optical and optomechanical design work, conducting various analyses to assess manufacturability. SurfCam, being a light field camera, has seen the development of a prototype to measure initial optical performance, along with conducting preliminary assembly and alignment. Despite some minor optical specification changes this year, the overall development is still ongoing. The paper will cover SurfCam's assembly and alignment strategies and performance measurement aspects.
The Sun-Earth Lagrange point L4 is the most stable location among the five Lagrange points at 1 AU. The L4 mission affords a clear and wide-angel view of the Sun-Earth line for the study of the Sun-Earth, Sun-Moon, and Sun-Mars connections from remote-sensing observations. The L4 mission will significantly contribute to advancing heliophysics science, improving the capability of space weather forecasting, and extending space weather studies beyond near-Earth space. This presentation outlines the importance of L4 observations and advocates comprehensive and coordinated observations of the heliosphere at multi-points including other planned L1 and L5 missions. In addition, conceptual designs are provided for an optical telescope for solar H-alpha and photospheric magnetic field observation, and a EUV telescope for solar corona.
GrainCams is a lunar rover payload designed to explore lunar dust. It is a suite of two light field cameras: SurfCam and LevCam. The main goal of SurfCam is to provide 3D imaging of fairy castle structures believed to exist on the lunar surface. LevCam’s objective is to understand dust speed and track the trail of lofting dust on the lunar surface. The mechanical stiffness of the camera is capable of enduring the vibration and shock conditions of the launcher. Thus, we conducted the opto-mechanical design for Surfam and analyzed the safety through theoretical estimation. The safety of whole structure is also reviewed from structural analysis such as linear static analysis and modal analysis. These cameras will operate in the extreme temperature of the moon. To achieve a viable thermal design despite the extreme lunar thermal environment and uncertainty of the payload interface with the rover, we assumed a thermal adiabatic payload interface and employed passive (e.g., thermal insulation blankets (MLIs), surface control of thermal radiation, specially designed radiators with an inclination angle of 36.5° to effectively avoid Solar flux and maximize unobstructed view of space relative to the lunar surface in hot cases) and active (e.g., heaters) thermal control techniques. Each camera should weigh no more than 5 kg and consume no more than 20 W of power. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of the structure design of GrainCams.
KEYWORDS: Thermal analysis, Design and modelling, Thermal modeling, Fused deposition modeling, Solar energy, Optical telescopes, Optical surfaces, Space operations, Satellites, Control systems
Space telescopes are exposed to extreme hot and cold temperature variations in the space environment depending on their orbit conditions. These temperature variations cause a significant effect on the opto-mechanical structures and lead to the final optical performance degradation. The development of space optical telescopes must achieve a thermally stable and reliable system through thermal analysis for on-orbit temperature prediction and thermal control design maintaining all components within their operating/survival temperature limits during entire mission phases. In this paper, we report the analysis results of passive and active thermal design for the ROKITS mission based on on-orbit thermal analysis taking into account the worst hot and cold conditions in the space environment using thermal analysis program - Thermal Desktop®, SINDA/FLUINT®.
The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute is working on a project, the Republic of Korea Imaging Test System shortly called ROKITS, which is an optical system that aims to study the formation and occurrence of the aurora. The main objective is to gain insights into the changes occurring in the atmosphere, particularly the upper atmosphere, due to external energy sources from outside the Earth. Additionally, the system will investigate the feasibility of detecting atmospheric waves, specifically atmospheric gravity waves, which spread from the lower atmosphere. To achieve these scientific goals, 90 degrees of a wide field of view and a very narrow bandwidth of filters in a specific wavelength are required, and this paper will present information on the optical design and related analysis.
The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute is developing GrainCam as a candidate payload for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). GrainCam is a suite of two light field cameras: one of which is called SurfCam to observe the uppermost regolith on the lunar surface, and the other is LevCam to observe levitating dust over the lunar surface. This paper includes SurfCam's optical design and related analyses. The main goal of SurfCam is to get knowledge of the regolith on the lunar surface and obtain 3D images of the micro-structures through image processing with a micro-lens array (MLA). SurfCam consists of 1 cover glass and 12 spherical lenses. All lenses use space-qualified glass material to carry out a one-lunar-day mission on the moon and are designed to keep the required performance at the operating temperature of -20 ~ +60°𝐶. SurfCam based on the design works will conduct various tests to verify the overall performance through assembly and alignment.
This conference presentation was prepared for the Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX conference at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022.
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has been developing the Camera Lens System (CLS) for the Total Solar Eclipse (TSE) observation. In 2016 we have assembled a simple camera system including a camera lens, a polarizer, bandpass filters, and CCD to observe the solar corona during the Total Solar Eclipse in Indonesia. Even we could not obtain the satisfactory result in the observation due to poor environment, we obtained some lessons such as poor image quality due to ghost effect from the lens system. For 2017 TSE observation, we have studied and adapted the compact coronagraph design proposed by NASA. The compact coronagraph design dramatically reduces the volume and weight and can be used for TSE observation without an external occulter which blocks the solar disk. We are in developing another camera system using the compact coronagraph design to test and verify key components including bandpass filter, polarizer, and CCD, and it will be used for the Total Solar Eclipse (TSE) in 2017. We plan to adapt this design for a coronagraph mission in the future. In this report we introduce the progress and current status of the project and focus on optical engineering works including designing, analyzing, testing, and building for the TSE observation.
In this paper we present Big Bear Solar Observatory’s (BBSO) newest adaptive optics system – AO-308. AO-308 is a result of collaboration between BBSO and National Solar Observatory (NSO). AO-308 uses a 357 actuators deformable mirror (DM) from Xinetics and its wave front sensor (WFS) has 308 sub-apertures. The WFS uses a Phantom V7.3 camera which runs at 2000 Hz with the region of interest of 416×400 pixels. AO-308 utilizes digital signal processors (DSPs) for image processing. AO-308 has been successfully used during the 2013 observing season. The system can correct up to 310 modes providing diffraction limited images at all wavelengths of interest.
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Cameras, Digital signal processing, Computer programming, Solar telescopes, CMOS cameras, Motion measurement, Signal processing, Computed tomography, Imaging systems
In this paper, we report on the development of a correlation tracker system for the New Solar Telescope (NST). It
consists of three sub-systems: a tip-tilt mirror unit, a camera unit, and a control unit. Its software has been developed via
Microsoft Visual C++, which enables us to take images from the high-speed CMOS camera in order to measure the
image motions induced by atmospheric turbulence by using SAD algorithm and 2-D FFT cross-correlation, and to
control the high-dynamics Piezo tip-tilt mirror for tip-tilt correction. We adopted the SIMD technology and parallel
programming technology based on the Intel Core 2 Quad processor without any additional processing system (FPGA or
DSP) for high-speed performance. As a result, we can make a tip-tilt correction with about seven hundreds of Hz in a
closed loop mode. The prototype system has been successfully developed in a laboratory and will be installed on the
NST.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Control systems, Human-machine interfaces, Mirrors, Space telescopes, Telecommunications, Distributed computing, Solar telescopes, Observatories, Domes
The New Solar Telescope (NST) is an advanced solar telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). It features a 1.6-m clear aperture with an off-axis Gregorian configuration. An open structure will be employed to improve the local seeing. The NST Telescope Control System (TCS) is a complex system, which provides powerful and robust control over the entire telescope system. At the same time, it needs to provide a simple and clear user interface to scientists and observers. We present an overview of the design and implementation of the TCS as a distributed system including its several subsystems such as the Telescope Pointing and Tracking Subsystem, Wavefront Sensing Subsystem etc. The communications between different subsystems are handled by the Internet Communication Engine (Ice) middleware.
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