On-axis afocal telescopes as framework for CubeSat based astronomical imagers and slit-less spectrographs

Abstract

CubeSats present unique opportunities for observational astronomy in the modern era. They are useful in observing difficult-to-access wavelength regions and long-term monitoring of interesting astronomical sources. However, conventional telescope designs are not necessarily the best fit for the restricted envelope of a CubeSat. Additionally, fine-pointing stability on these platforms is difficult due to the low mass of the spacecraft, and special allocations within the optical design are needed to achieve stable pointing. We propose afocal telescope designs as the framework to realise imagers and low-resolution spectrographs on CubeSat platforms. These designs help reduce the number of components in the optical chain and aim to improve throughput and sensitivity compared to conventional designs. Additionally, they also provide a fine steering mechanism within a collimated beam section. Fine beam steering within the collimated beam section avoids issues of image degradation due to out-of-plane rotation of the image plane or offset in the rotation axis of the mirror. This permits using simple and mostly off-the-shelf tip-tilt mirrors for beam steering. The designs discussed here also allow for a standard telescope design to be used in many instrument types; thus reducing the complexity as well as the development time and cost. The optical design, performance, and SNR estimations of these designs, along with some interesting science cases, are discussed. Several practical aspects in implementation, such as guiding, tolerancing, choice of detectors, vibration analysis, and laboratory test setups, are also presented.