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S.E. Kendrick, T. Reed (Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.), J.B. Hadaway (Univ. of Alabama in Huntsville), J. Keidel (Marshall Space Flight Center)
Lightweighted mirror technology is essential for such spaceborne deployable applications as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). The 0.53-m diameter Sub-scale Beryllium Mirror Demonstrator (SBMD) has been tested at temperatures down to 23K, with little induced figure error. This 20-m radius of curvature mirror was manufactured with a semi-rigid geometric design which performed better than the required 12 kg/m2. The mirror has been designed and demonstrated to have radius of curvature control through the application of a central actuator. This approach to lightweight mirrors is being extended to a 1.39-m point-to-point hexagon mirror system under the Advanced Mirror System Demonstrator (AMSD) program. The results of the SBMD testing will be presented. SBMD and AMSD Phase II mirror programs are contracts from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.