1. Optical alignment of contamination-sensitive Far-Ultraviolet spectrographs for Aspera SmallSat mission
- Author
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Khan, Aafaque R., Hamden, Erika, Chung, Haeun, Choi, Heejoo, Kim, Daewook, Melso, Nicole, Hoadley, Keri, Vargas, Carlos J., Truong, Daniel, Garcia, Elijah, Verts, Bill, Coronado, Fernando, Noenickx, Jamison, Corliss, Jason, Tanquary, Hannah, Mcmahon, Tom, Hamara, Dave, Agarwal, Simran, Augustin, Ramona, Behroozi, Peter, Bradley, Harrison, Brendel, Trenton, Burchett, Joe, Castillo, Jasmine Martinez, Chambers, Jacob, Corlies, Lauren, Davis, Greyson, Dettmar, Ralf-Jürgen, Douglas, Ewan, Ghidoli, Giulia, Goodwin, Alfred, Harris, Walter, Hergenrother, Carl, Howk, J. Christopher, Keppler, Miriam, Kerkeser, Nazende Ipek, Kidd Jr., John N., Li, Jessica S., Noriega, Gabe, Park, Sooseong, Pecha, Ryan, Sauve, Cork, Schiminovich, David, Selznick, Sanford, Siegmund, Oswald, Su, Rebecca, Uppnor, Sumedha, Vider, Jacob, Wolcott, Ellie, Yescas, Naomi, and Zaritsky, Dennis
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors ,Physics - Optics - Abstract
Aspera is a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers SmallSat mission designed to study diffuse OVI emission from the warm-hot phase gas in the halos of nearby galaxies. Its payload consists of two identical Rowland Circle-type long-slit spectrographs, sharing a single MicroChannel plate detector. Each spectrograph channel consists of an off-axis parabola primary mirror and a toroidal diffraction grating optimized for the 1013-1057 Angstroms bandpass. Despite the simple configuration, the optical alignment/integration process for Aspera is challenging due to tight optical alignment tolerances, driven by the compact form factor, and the contamination sensitivity of the Far-Ultraviolet optics and detectors. In this paper, we discuss implementing a novel multi-phase approach to meet these requirements using state-of-the-art optical metrology tools. For coarsely positioning the optics we use a blue-laser 3D scanner while the fine alignment is done with a Zygo interferometer and a custom computer-generated hologram. The detector focus requires iterative in-vacuum alignment using a Vacuum UV collimator. The alignment is done in a controlled cleanroom facility at the University of Arizona., Comment: Manuscript submitted for Proceedings of Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024, Paper no. 13093-9
- Published
- 2024