Large Space Telescope

The Large Space Telescope, which is scheduled to be put into orbit above the Earth's atmosphere by NASA in the early 1980s, is a large, multipurpose optical instrument that is being designed to provide an increase in observational capability of nearly 100×. with respect to brightness, 10× in resolving power, and a substantial bandwidth improvement over ground-based facilities. This paper describes, from a functional performance viewpoint, the LST system and, in greater detail, the on-board Data Management and Pointing Control Systems.