• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.142-146
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• 2004

Spaceborne earth observation or astronomical payloads often use Cassegrain-type telescopes due to limits in mass and volume. Precision optical alignment of such a telescope is vital to the success of the mission. This paper describes the alignment simulation and experiment of computer-aided alignment method during the assembly of MAC (Medium-sized Aperture Camera) telescope for spaceborne earth observation.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.391-396
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• 2004

Spaceborne earth observation or astronomical payloads often use Cassegrain-type telescopes due to the limits in mass and volume. Precision optical alignment of such a telescope is vital to the success of the mission. This paper describes the simulated optical alignment methods using interferograms, wavefront error, and reverse-optimization method for different levels of alignment accuracy. It concludes with the alignment experiment results of a Cassegrain type spaceborne camera with 300mm entrance pupil diameter.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.75-80
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• 2018

The working principle of a satellite camera involves a focusing mechanism for controlling the focus of the optical system, which is essential for proper functioning. However, research on focusing mechanisms of satellite optical systems in Korea is in the beginning stage and developed technology is limited to a thermal control type. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a motor-driven focusing mechanism applicable to small satellite optical systems. The proposed mechanism is designed to generate z-axis displacement in the secondary mirror by a motor. In addition, three flexure hinges have been installed on the supporter for application of preload on the mechanism resulting in minimization of the alignment error arising due to manufacturing tolerance and assembly tolerance within the mechanism. After fabrication of the mechanism, the alignment errors (de-space, de-center, and tilt) were measured with LVDT sensors and laser displacement meters. Conclusively, the proposed focusing mechanism could achieve proper alignment degree, which can be applicable to small satellite optical system.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.146-152
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• 2017

Alignment of the mirrors composing a space telescope is an important process for obtaining high optical resolution and performance of the camera system. The alignment of mirrors using cube mirrors requires a relative coordinate mapping between the mirror and the cube mirror before optical-system integration. Therefore, to align the spacecraft camera mirrors, the relative coordinates of the vertex of each mirror and the corresponding cube mirror must be accurately measured. This paper proposes a new method for finding the vertex position of a primary mirror, by using an optical fiber and alignment segments of a computer-generated hologram (CGH). The measurement system is composed of an optical testing interferometer and a multimode optical fiber. We used two theodolites to measure the relative coordinates of the optical fiber located at the mirror vertex with respect to the cube mirror, and achieved a measurement precision of better than $25{\mu}m$.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2023

The use of segmented mirrors is one of the ways to make the primary mirror of a spaceborne satellite larger, where several small mirrors are combined into a large monolithic mirror. To align multiple segmented mirrors as one large mirror, there must be no discontinuity in the x, y-axis (tilt) and axial alignment error (piston) between adjacent mirrors. When the tilt and piston are removed, we can collect the light in one direction and get an expected clear image. Therefore, we need a precise wavefront sensor that can measure the alignment error of the segmented mirrors in nm scale. The tilt error can be easily detected by the point spread image of the segmented mirrors, while the piston error is hard to detect because of the absence of apparent features, but makes a downgraded image. In this paper we used an optical testing interferometer such as a Fizeau interferometer, which has various advantages when aligning the segmented mirror on the ground, and focused on measuring the axial displacement error of a segmented mirror as the basic research of measuring the piston errors between adjacent mirrors. First, we calculated the relationship between the axial displacement error of the segmented mirror and the surface defocus error of the interferometer and verified the calculated formula through experiments. Using the experimental results, we analyzed the measurement uncertainty and obtained the limitation of the Fizeau interferometer in detecting axial displacement errors.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.9-17
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• 2018

For Earth observation, a small satellite camera has relatively weak structural stability compared to medium-sized satellite, resulting in misalignment of optical components due to severe launching and space environments. These alignment errors can deteriorate the optical performance of satellite cameras. In this study, we proposed a 3-axis focus mechanism to compensate misalignment in a small satellite camera. This mechanism consists of three piezo-electric actuators to perform x-axis and y-axis tilt with de-space compensation. Design requirements for the focus mechanism were derived from the design of the Schmidt-Cassegrain target optical system. To compensate the misalignment of the secondary mirror (M2), the focus mechanism was installed just behind the M2 to control the 3-axis movement of M2. In this case, flexure design with Box-Behnken test plan was used to minimize optical degradation due to wave front error. The wave front error was analyzed using ANSYS. The fabricated focus mechanism demonstrated excellent servo performance in experiments with PID servo control.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.74-83
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• 2022

The entire process, from the raw material to the final system qualification test, has been developed to fabricate a large-diameter, lightweight reflective-telescope system for a satellite observation. The telescope with 3 anastigmatic mirrors has an aperture of 700 mm and a total mass of 66 kg. We baked a silicon carbide substrate body from a carbon preform using a reaction sintering method, and tested the structural and chemical properties, surface conditions, and crystal structure of the body. We developed the polishing and coating methods considering the mechanical and chemical properties of the silicon carbide (SiC) body, and we utilized a chemical-vapor-deposition method to deposit a dense SiC thin film more than 170 ㎛ thick on the mirror's surface, to preserve a highly reflective surface with excellent optical performance. After we made the SiC mirrors, we measured the wave-front error for various optical fields by assembling and aligning three mirrors and support structures. We conducted major space-environment tests for the components and final assembly by temperature-cycling tests and vibration-shock tests, in accordance with the qualifications for the space and launch environment. We confirmed that the final telescope achieves all of the target performance criteria.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_1
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• pp.1257-1271
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• 2022

Recently, many Earth observation optical satellites have been developed, as their demands were increasing. Therefore, a rapid preprocessing of satellites became one of the most important problem for an active utilization of satellite images. Satellite image matching is a technique in which two images are transformed and represented in one specific coordinate system. This technique is used for aligning different bands or correcting of relative positions error between two satellite images. In this paper, we propose an automatic image matching method among satellite images with different ground sampling distances (GSDs). Our method is based on improved feature matching and robust estimation of transformation between satellite images. The proposed method consists of five processes: calculation of overlapping area, improved feature detection, feature matching, robust estimation of transformation, and image resampling. For feature detection, we extract overlapping areas and resample them to equalize their GSDs. For feature matching, we used Oriented FAST and rotated BRIEF (ORB) to improve matching performance. We performed image registration experiments with images KOMPSAT-3A and RapidEye. The performance verification of the proposed method was checked in qualitative and quantitative methods. The reprojection errors of image matching were in the range of 1.277 to 1.608 pixels accuracy with respect to the GSD of RapidEye images. Finally, we confirmed the possibility of satellite image matching with heterogeneous GSDs through the proposed method.