Development of an integrated model of a high order, active segmented mirror for space telescopes

The scientific cases of interest for next-generation space telescopes result in challenging requirements for resolution, contrast and wavefront stability, which must be matched with an effective mission risk and cost mitigation. The integration of a deformable primary mirror with contactless actuators may address these needs by decoupling the shell from the reference body and thus enabling active wavefront control, vibration rejection and weight reduction through the use of lighter materials. The present work aims to provide a parametric integrated model to simulate the thermal effects of the orbital environment on a space telescope equipped with an active segmented primary mirror. The simulator will run several mission profiles and, for each time step, compute thermal deformations on the support, disturbance propagation to the optics and the wavefront correction to deliver at the focal plane with the associated force and stroke budgets for the actuators. Through a trade-off study of orbital and system parameters, the goal of the tool is to investigate the attractiveness of the contactless deformable mirror technology in terms of mission cost and performance, by simulating the whole system in a real-world operational scenario.