High bandwidth fast steering mirror

A high bandwidth, gimbaled, fast steering mirror (FSM) assembly has been designed and tested at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC) Advanced Technology Center (ATC). The design requirements were to gimbal a 5 cm diameter mirror about its reflective surface, and provide 1 KHz tip/tilt/piston control while maintaining λ/900 flatness of the mirror. The simple, yet very compact and rugged device also has manual tip/tilt/piston alignment capability. The off-the-shelf Piezo translators (PZT) actuators enable reliable and repeatable closed loop control. The adopted solution achieves a good mass balance and gimbaled motion about the center of the mirror front surface. Special care was taken to insure the best positioning means with the mounted mirror assembly held kinematically in place. The manual adjusters have very good resolution, with the capability to be locked in place. All solutions were thoroughly modeled and analyzed. This paper covers the design, analysis, fabrication, assembly, and testing of this device. The FSM was designed for ground test only.