Since the fabrication of the Keck telescope primary mirror segments, radius of curvature matching have been known to be one of the major challenge in manufacturing segmented optics with high accuracy. Curvature is generally not a critical specification for optics as any error can be compensated by alignment (for a telescope mirror, by the distance between M1 and M2). However, for a segmented primary such as the ones in the Keck, GTC or ELT telescopes, a radius of curvature mismatch prevents from generating a continuous surface when assembling the mirror through a residual surface error called scalloping. We will present how this constraint drove the design of ELT metrology means, and how we achieved a radius of curvature metrology with 50 ppm absolute accuracy on a 71m curvature reference.
In 2017, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) awarded a contract for the manufacturing of the segments of the primary mirror for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to Safran Reosc. Since then, we designed a production unit dedicated for ELT M1. From spherical mirror blanks, we first glue 39 pads per segment. We then shape, polish and cut the segments with 133 different off-axis aspheric definitions. We finish them to nanometer accuracy using ion beam figuring and a fully automated interferometric test bench. Now manufacturing has begun, we present the solutions and methods that we developed to manufacture more than one segment per day.
Green light for the construction of the 39-m aperture giant Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) was given by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) council on Dec 4th, 2014. Procurement of the key elements, especially the optics, was immediately initiated by ESO team. Up today, Safran Reosc was awarded all the key optical polishing and testing contracts with:
2015-07: contract for the Adaptive Optics M4 mirror thin glass petals,
2016-07: contract for the 4-m M2 convex mirror,
2017-02: contract for the 4-m M3 mirror.
2017-05: contract for polishing and intergation of the 931 1.45-m hexagonal segments for the giant 39-m M1 mirror assembly
This paper is dedicated to highlighting the various challenges linked to these various optical fabrication projects and reporting about the progress of our work so far.
Green light for the construction of the 39-m aperture Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) was given by the Council of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Dec 4th, 2014. Procurement of the key elements, especially the optics, the dome and structure and the glass substrates, was soon after initiated by ESO team. Safran Reosc is proud to have been awarded all the key optical polishing and testing contracts with:
2015-07: the contract for thin glass petals of the Adaptive Optics M4 mirror unit,
2016-07: the contract for polishing the 4-m secondary convex mirror M2,
2017-02: the contract for polishing of the 4-m tertiary mirror M3,
2017-05: the contract for polishing and integration of the 931 1.45-m hexagonal segments constituting the giant 39-m primary mirror assembly M1.
This paper reports Safran Reosc’s work progresses along these four contracts with their various challenges and more specifically those related to the mass production of the M1 segments.
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