Sunshield technology and flight experiment for the Next Generation Space Telescope

摘要: The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) requires a sunshield to passively cool the telescope and detectors temperatures between 60° 100° Kelvin. is large, deployable, multilayer thin-film membrane structure. Characteristics of this design are ultra lightweight, high packaging efficiency, deployment reliability, low life-cycle costs, 5 10 years mission life at L2. A thermal performance, or e*, requirement has been determined from integrated modeling. Performance achievable, however, many hurdles remain. NGST actively working reduce risk in area technology. Areas under study include: system stability, lifetime materials, optical properties effects micrometeoroid damage, development analytical models. An inflatable selected included yardstick architecture. As part technology effort, performing flight demonstration on Pathfinder 1 mission. Inflatable Sunshield (ISIS) experiment scheduled for October 2001 Shuttle. This paper will discuss requirements, development, component level testing, modeling tools, ISIS experiment.