Production of the first mirror shell for ESA's XMM telescope by application of a dedicated large area replication technique
- 1 January 1990
- journal article
- Published by SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng in Optical Engineering
- Vol. 29 (10) , 1267-1273
- https://doi.org/10.1117/12.55725
Abstract
A large number of mirror shells are required for the European Space Agency's XMM telescope three mirror modules, each of which consists of 58 thin walled highly nested Wolter I mirrors. The specified performance of the XMM mirror modules requires new design concepts and application of new technologies for the production of the lightweight mirror shells. Under an ESA contract, Carl Zeiss is leading a European industrial/scientific consortium to develop technologies that allow production of real size XMM mirror shells by a dedicated metal/epoxy resin replication technique. In late 1988 the first full size XMM mirror shell was successfully replicated, having the following characteristics: total length 600 mm, maximum shell diameter 400 mm, carrier material/thickness graphite-epoxy/0.8 mm, replication layers gold/epoxy, and total replicated mirror surface 7500 cm2. The development, preparation, and mirror shell replication are described, and the first results of the performance of the mirror shell after measurements and x-ray testing are presented.Keywords
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