The wide-field multiband imaging and slitless spectroscopy survey to be carried out by the Survey Space Telescope of China Manned Space Program

Abstract

The 2 m-aperture Survey Space Telescope (also known as the China Space Station Telescope, CSST) is a major science project of China Manned Space Program. It is expected to start science operations around 2024 and has a nominal mission lifetime of 10 years. During observations, CSST will fly independently in the same orbit as the space station while maintaining a large distance apart. It can dock with the space station for refueling and servicing as scheduled or as needed. With a Cook-type three-mirror anastigmat design, CSST can achieve superior image quality within a large field of view (FoV), which gives it an advantage for survey observations. Being an off-axis telescope without any obstruction, its point spread function (PSF) is not affected by diffraction of mirror support structures and is thus helpful for weak-lensing shear measurements. The radius encircling 80% energy of the PSF within CSST’s central 1.1 square degrees of FoV is required to be no more than 0.15″, including all wavefront errors in the optics and instruments and dynamical effects such as the telescope’s attitude control and vibration. CSSTwill be launched with 5 first-generation instruments including a survey camera, a terahertz receiver, a multichannel imager, an integral field spectrograph, and a cool planet imaging coronagraph. The survey camera is equipped with 30 9k×9k detectors for science observations, each with a filter or grating mounted above, a defocused 9k×9k detector for flux calibration in r band, 8 640×512 near-infrared detectors, fine guide sensors, and wavefront sensors. The primary task of CSST is to carry out a high-resolution large-area multiband imaging and slitless