The versatile CubeSat Telescope: going to large apertures in small spacecraft

Jaren N. Ashcraft; Ewan S. Douglas; Daewook Kim; George A. Smith; Kerri Cahoy; Tom Connors; Kevin Z. Derby; Victor Gasho; Kerry Gonzales; Charlotte E. Guthery; Geon Hee Kim; Corwynn Sauve; Paul Serra

doi:10.1117/12.2594884

20 August 2021 The versatile CubeSat Telescope: going to large apertures in small spacecraft

Jaren N. Ashcraft, Ewan S. Douglas, Daewook Kim, George A. Smith, Kerri Cahoy, Tom Connors, Kevin Z. Derby, Victor Gasho, Kerry Gonzales, Charlotte E. Guthery, Geon Hee Kim, Corwynn Sauve, Paul Serra

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11819, UV/Optical/IR Space Telescopes and Instruments: Innovative Technologies and Concepts X; 1181904 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2594884
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2021, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The design of a CubeSat telescope for academic research purposes must balance complicated optical and structural designs with cost to maximize performance in extreme environments. Increasing the CubeSat size (eg. 6U to 12U) will increase the potential optical performance, but the cost will increase in kind. Recent developments in diamond-turning have increased the accessibility of aspheric aluminum mirrors, enabling a cost-effective regime of well-corrected nanosatellite telescopes. We present an all-aluminum versatile CubeSat telescope (VCT) platform that optimizes performance, cost, and schedule at a relatively large 95 mm aperture and 0.4 degree diffraction limited full field of view stablized by MEMS fine-steering modules. This study features a new design tool that permits easy characterization of performance degradation as a function of spacecraft thermal and structural disturbances. We will present details including the trade between on- and off-axis implementations of the VCT, thermal stability requirements and finite-element analysis, and launch survival considerations. The VCT is suitable for a range of CubeSat borne applications, which provides an affordable platform for astronomy, Earth-imaging, and optical communications.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Jaren N. Ashcraft, Ewan S. Douglas, Daewook Kim, George A. Smith, Kerri Cahoy, Tom Connors, Kevin Z. Derby, Victor Gasho, Kerry Gonzales, Charlotte E. Guthery, Geon Hee Kim, Corwynn Sauve, and Paul Serra "The versatile CubeSat Telescope: going to large apertures in small spacecraft", Proc. SPIE 11819, UV/Optical/IR Space Telescopes and Instruments: Innovative Technologies and Concepts X, 1181904 (20 August 2021); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2594884

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