We present the enabling concept and technology for a dual spacecraft formation-flying optical interferometer, to be launched into a deep space orbit as Space Technology 3. The combiner spacecraft makes use of a nested cat's eye delay line configuration that minimizes wavefront distortion and stores 20 m of optical pathlength in a package of \sim 1.5 m length. A parabolic trajectory for the secondary collector spacecraft enables baselines of up to 200 m for a fixed 20 m stored delay and spacecraft separations of up to 1 km.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9912327,
title = {Enabling concepts for a dual spacecraft formation-flying optical interferometer for NASA's ST3 mission},
author = {Peter W. Gorham and William M. Folkner and Gary H. Blackwood},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9912327},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
6 pp, 4 fig., to appear in "Working on the Fringe", Proc. of the 1999 Dana Pt. Conf. on Optical Interferometry, PASP conf. proc., in press; (some slight revisions from conference version)