Optomechanical analysis and testing of a fast steering secondary mirror prototype for the Giant Magellan Telescope

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be one of the next class of extremely large segmented mirror telescopes. The GMT will utilize two Gregorian secondary mirrors, and Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM) and a Fast-steering Secondary Mirror (FSM). The FSM consists of six off-axis mirrors surrounding a central on-axis circular segment. The segments are 1.1 m in diameter and conjugated 1:1 to the seven 8.4 m segments of the primary. A prototype of the FSM mirror (FSMP) has been developed, analyzed and tested in order to demonstrate the mechanical and optical responses of the mirror assembly when subjected to structural and thermal loadings. In this paper, the mechanical and thermal performances of the FSMP were evaluated by performing finite element analyses (FEA) in NX Nastran. The deformation of the mirror’s lateral flexure was measured when the FSMP was axially loaded and the temperature response of the mirror assembly was measured when exposed to a sample thermal environment. In order to validate the mirror/lateral flexure design concept, the mechanical, optical and thermal measurements obtained from the tests conducted on mirrors having two different lateral flexures were compared to the responses calculated by FEA.