The United States of America As Represented by the United States

The United States of America As Represented by the Department of Energy

Yale Oster

Norbert A Massie

David C Mundinger

Edward V George

A large effective-aperture, low-cost optical telescope with diffraction-limited resolution enables ground-based observation of near-earth space objects. The telescope has a non-redundant, thinned-aperture array in a center-mount, single-structure space frame. It employs speckle interferometric imaging to achieve diffraction-limited resolution. The signal-to-noise ratio problem is mitigated by moving the wavelength of operation to the near-IR, and the image is sensed by a Silicon CCD. The steerable, single-structure array presents a constant pupil. The center-mount, radar-like mount enables low-earth orbit space objects to be tracked as well as increases stiffness of the space frame. In the preferred embodiment, the array has elemental telescopes with subaperture of 2.1 m in a circle-of-nine configuration. The telescope array has an effective aperture of 12 m which provides a diffraction-limited resolution of 0.02 arc seconds. Pathlength matching of the telescope array is maintained by an electro-optical system employing laser metrology. Speckle imaging relaxes pathlength matching tolerance by one order of magnitude as compared to phased arrays. Many features of the telescope contribute to substantial reduction in costs. These include eliminating the conventional protective dome and reducing on-site construction activites. The cost of the telescope scales with the first power of the aperture rather than its third power as in conventional telescopes.

High resolution telescope

Deep UV projection lithography can be performed using an e-beam pumped solid excimer UV source, a mask, and a UV reduction camera. The UV source produces deep UV radiation in the range 1700-1300A using xenon, krypton or argon; shorter wavelengths of 850-650A can be obtained using neon or helium. A thin solid layer of the gas is formed on a cryogenically cooled plate and bombarded with an e-beam to cause fluorescence. The UV reduction camera utilizes multilayer mirrors having high reflectivity at the UV wavelength and images the mask onto a resist coated substrate at a preselected demagnification. The mask can be formed integrally with the source as an emitting mask.

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Danville, CA, United States of America

Yale Oster