Low-Cost Space Structure Pointing Experiment

Abstract Because of the high cost of space programs and the specter of system failure, it is important to be as certain as possible that spacecraft perform adequately in space. Often the most important ingredient is adequate pointing and control performance. This paper describes an approach to investigate whether pointing performance can be demonstrated for spaceborne optical telescopes. The proposed experiment consists of a few representative "sparse" elements incorporated into a small satellite, dynamically emulating the actual large systems, and ejected from a Space Shuttle as a Hitchhiker payload.