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Backup secondary mirror and mechanism for SOFIA
2004
Ground-based Telescopes
Preserved Fulltext
The SOFIA telescope has a silicon carbide secondary mirror and a six degree-of-freedom secondary mirror mechanism. Each of these high-technology items represents a single-point failure mode, because both are essential for operation of the observatory, and neither has a spare. Reduced-performance, relatively inexpensive "backup" hardware can enable a large fraction of the planned SOFIA science observations, and so can help to assure a highly reliable flight program. Accordingly, we have
doi:10.1117/12.555478
fatcat:rvxszhar2fdelidmiumihwxqhm