Control of Giant Multi-Segmented Telescopes

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Intellectual MeritMost concepts to build giant telescopes are based on extending the design of existing telescopes to larger sizes. For example, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) are based on the Keck design and on spin casting furnace technology. While both approaches are based on the proven technology of the 1980?s, these designs come with a high price tag because substantial engineering investments are required when scaling to a 30-m aperture; the primary mirror itself is expected to have a surface figure good to tens of nanometer in the presence of wind and gravitational deflections and the atmospheric turbulence must then be corrected by an adaptive optics (AO) system placed between the primary mirror and detector operating with many thousand actuators. An alternative approach is to use smaller segments, of the order of a few thousands, that are controlled at higher bandwidths to remove the effects of atmospheric turbulence and windshake at the primary mirror. This will produce a high performance telescope at significantly lower cost. The proposed research plans to address the control of the reflective surface of the primary mirror, a major technological challenge of ATLAS design. This work plans to leverage on the investigators? preliminary work on the application of recently developed distributed control techniques, and on their experimental test rigs to fully validate their control approach. Broader ImpactThis work will have implications to future astronomical and scientific discovery technologies. It will enable the building the construction of large telescopes by astronomers. In addition, the main educational impact of this effort will be in terms of (i) Developing courses and educational materials that discuss systematic approaches for control of large telescopic systems. (ii) Maintaining a Web-page at the University of Illinois which will be used to disseminate new results within the members of the ATLAS team as well as to the broader scientific and research community, including Argonne National Laboratories.