Preliminary optical design of an Active Optics test bench for space applications

Abstract

This communication presents a preliminary optical design for a test bench conceived within the European Space Agency's TRP project (Active Optics Correction Chain (AOCC) for large monolithic mirrors) with the goal of designing and developing an Active Optics system able to correct in space on telescopes apertures larger than 3 meters. The test bench design uses two deformable mirrors of 37.5 mm and 116 mm, the smallest mirror to generate aberrations and the largest one to correct them. The system is configured as a multi-functional test bench capable of verifying the performance of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor as well as of a Phase Diversity based wavefront sensor. A third optical path leads to a high-order Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor to monitor the entire system performance.