Assembly and Integration of Optical Systems for Space Applications

To ensure the performance of optical systems for space applications, the design of the mounts for the optical elements and the choice of materials are crucial. Beside this also the applied bonding techniques are playing a major role. The alignment of the optical elements must remain after the loads of the launch phase and in the thermal environment of the satellite. We present our achievements in alignment accuracy and stability during assembly and integration of optical systems for space applications in the case of two very different examples: In the first example we bonded prisms to a baseplate using a radiation activated optical adhesive. The achieved alignment accuracy was better than 3 ''. In the second example we bonded Zerodur mirrors with diameters up to 150 mm and mass of 1 kg to Invar mounting frames using a slow curing two-component adhesive. Here the achieved alignment accuracy was in the order of 10 ''. Thanks to our sophisticated bonding techniques and specially designed mounts and bonding jigs, these aligmnents were preserved during environmental tests like thermal cycling and vibration tests.