The AAReST mission, an international collaboration involving Indian Space Research Organisation’s Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) for demonstrating a new breed of space-based optical telescope, is poised for a mid-2020 launch.
The Autonomous Assembly of Reconfigurable Space Telescope, AAReST, is a joint effort by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), University of Surrey, and the IIST to prove that large-space telescopes can be built by assembling smaller mirror segments out in space.
Caltech officials visited the IIST campus at Valiyamala in Thiruvananthapuram late last week for discussions.
At present, the size of the primary apertures of space-borne telescopes — Hubble and the proposed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are examples — is ultimately limited by the diameter of the launch vehicle in which they are transported to space.
In anutshell
With AAReST, the idea in a nutshell is to develop multiple autonomous spacecraft, each with its own mirror, which would reconfigure in space. Together, they would serve the purpose of a single, large mirror.
The IIST is contributing one of the two ‘mirror satellites’ that are part of the configuration.
Test under way
The test of the hardware is under way, IIST Director V.K. Dadhwal told The Hindu . If things pan out, the mission will be launched by June-July 2020.
AAReST has three parts. The core satellite or coresat is built by Caltech and features rigid mirrors and a boom with a camera and two ‘mirror satellites’ or mirrorsats consisting of deformable mirrors, one each built by the IIST and the University of Surrey, make up the remaining two segments.
The satellites will have a total mass of around 25 kg with dimensions of 350 cm x 400 cm x 525 cm.
The mirrorsat being developed by the IIST weighs 5 kg and features subsystems such as an on-board computer, electrical power systems, an attitude determination and control system and a cold gas propulsion system.
“Two key technologies, the deformable mirrors (built by Caltech) and autonomous reconfiguration (University of Surrey) would be demonstrated as the primary mission,” a senior IIST official said.
