Compensating aberrations of a 6-inch concave membrane mirror

Large and lightweight primary mirrors of high optical quality are considered to be a key element of next generation deployable space telescopes. In this paper we present a membrane mirror demonstrator and show experimental results of the associated mechanical and optical characteristics. The mounting conditions of such a membrane mirror cause static optical aberrations which are compensated as a proof of principle using an adaptive mirror and a metric optimizationbased control system. The feasibility of the complete system for receiving and transmitting applications will be discussed.