An approach for alignment, mounting, and integration of IXO mirror segments

Kai-Wing Chan; William Zhang; Timo Saha; David Robinson; Lawrence Olsen; Ryan McClelland; James Mazzarella; Lawrence Lozipone; John Lehan; Melinda Hong; Charles Fleetwood; Tyler Evans; Glenn Byron; Jacob Larimore

doi:10.1117/12.825105

31 August 2009 An approach for alignment, mounting, and integration of IXO mirror segments

Kai-Wing Chan, William Zhang, Timo Saha, David Robinson, Lawrence Olsen, Ryan McClelland, James Mazzarella, Lawrence Lozipone, John Lehan, Melinda Hong, Charles Fleetwood, Tyler Evans, Glenn Byron, Jacob Larimore

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7437, Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy IV; 74371D (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.825105
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2009, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The telescope on the International X-ray Observatory (IXO) comprises nearly 15 thousand thin glass mirror segments, each of them is capable of reflecting board-band soft x-rays at grazing angles. These mirror segments form densely packed, two-staged shells, in a Wolter type I optical design, in which each pair of the mirrors focus x-ray onto the focal plane in two reflections. The requirement in angular resolution of the IXO telescope is 5 arc-seconds. This requirement places severe challenges in forming precisely shaped mirror segments as well as in aligning and mounting these thin mirrors, which are 200 to 400 mm in size and 0.4 mm in thickness. In this paper, we will describe an approach for aligning and mounting the IXO mirror segments, in which no active adjustment is made to correct for any existing figure errors. The approach comprises processes such as suspension of a mirror under gravity to minimize gravity distortion, temporary bonding onto a strongback, alignment and transfer to a permanent structure and release of mirror from the temporary mount. Experimental results and analysis in this development are reported.

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Kai-Wing Chan, William Zhang, Timo Saha, David Robinson, Lawrence Olsen, Ryan McClelland, James Mazzarella, Lawrence Lozipone, John Lehan, Melinda Hong, Charles Fleetwood, Tyler Evans, Glenn Byron, and Jacob Larimore "An approach for alignment, mounting, and integration of IXO mirror segments", Proc. SPIE 7437, Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy IV, 74371D (31 August 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.825105

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