Assessment of a large aperture telescope trade space and active opto-mechanical control architecture

The Air Force's Phillips Laboratory has actively pursued component technology developments that support space based imaging and space-based laser weapon platforms. The components must be integrated successfully to field operational systems. The integration of many of these technology developments is tightly coupled and often themselves a technology barrier that must be overcome before a system can go ahead. As a result, the Phillips Laboratory initiated the UltraLITE program. The program has focused on the integration concerns of advanced sparse optical array systems. Sparse optical arrays offer significant benefits over the existing monolithic telescopes flown in space today; however, for a sparse optical array successful, the program technologies in the areas of advanced optical element fabrication, advanced lightweight actively controlled deployable structures, wavefront error sensing and compensation methods, and image post-processing algorithms. All these technologies must come to fruition and work together for such a program to succeed. The UltraLITE program concentrates on providing techniques for large precision deployable structures and wavefront sensing and control. The program will demonstrate these technologies in the laboratory with the long term goal of a space flight in a 0-g, micro-gravity environment.