SIM-Lite: status of the engineering progress toward flight

We present an overview of the ongoing progress towards flight readiness of the SIM project. We summarize the engineering milestones that have been completed in the last two years, namely: the Brass-Board Internal and External Metrology Beam Launchers, the Brass-Board Metrology Source, and the Instrument Communication Hardware/Software Architecture Demonstration. We also show other progress such as: the life test of the bass-screw and PZT actuators, building the Metrology Fiducials and the Single Strut Test Article. We status the ongoing work on the Brass-Board Fast Steering Mirror and the Brass-Board Astrometric Beam Combiner. We end with a proposed path towards finishing the Brass-Board suite.

[1]  Mark H. Milman,et al.  Error modeling of multi-baseline optical truss: part II. Applications to SIM metrology truss field dependent error , 2004, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[2]  James D. Moore,et al.  Brassboard Astrometric Beam Combiner (ABC) development for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[3]  Fabien Nicaise,et al.  An introduction to the Guide-2 telescope testbed for the SIM Planet Quest Light mission , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[4]  Renaud Goullioud,et al.  Overview of the SIM PlanetQuest Light mission concept , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[5]  Z. Chang,et al.  Extracting the zero-gravity surface figure of a mirror , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[6]  Xin An,et al.  Spectral calibration at the picometer level on SCDU (spectral calibration development unit) , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[7]  Jan Burke,et al.  Certification of the full size double corner cube fiducials for the Space Interferometer Mission-PlanetQuest test bed , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[8]  Robert A. Laskin,et al.  Successful completion of SIM-PlanetQuest technology , 2006, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[9]  R. Goullioud,et al.  Results from SIM's thermo-opto-mechanical (TOM3) testbed , 2006, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.