A deformable mirror for aberration correction in space telescopes

The Photonics Lab at FH Muenster is working on deformable mirrors for aberration correction in future large space telescopes. This work is carried out for the European Space Agency (ESA). The design of this piezoelectric unimorph mirror and the results of its space qualification have been published previously [Rausch et al. Opt. Exp. 23 19469 (2015) and Rausch et al. Opt. Exp. 24, 1528 (2016)]. All functional, operational, and performance requirements, including thermal-vacuum tests, were met. However, during environmental testing, simulating the vibration due to a rocket launch, the mirror failed at the highest loads of a certain random vibration. This lead to a re-design of the mirror in the framework of a project between FH Muenster, OHB, and ESA. The re-designed mirror has now been tested and meets all requirements, in particular acceleration by random vibrations with up to 17.8 g RMS in all directions. In the talk, we will present the opto-mechanical design of the re-designed deformable mirror and its optical performance. We will also briefly cover the modal vibration analysis and present some data of the latest test campaign.