XACT SOUNDING ROCKET ALIGNMENT

Raphael Cherney ‘11Dan Elg ’11

Clay Gimenez ’12Steven Higgins ‘12

Sounding Rockets

XACT Sounding Rocket

X-ray Concentrators & Star Tracker

Optical Bench

X-ray Polarimeters, Electronics, & MXS

A 1st approximation of complete XACT rocket

Black Brant VC

Terrier Mk70

Telemetry and ACSSystems

X-Ray Astronomy

Mirrors

Requirements

Bench separation of 3 meters

Displacement readings of .1 mm accuracy

Angle measurements of .2 arcminutes

Position Sensitive Photodiode

Original Concept

Laser

Beam Splitter

Position Sensitive Photodiodes

PSD-A

PSD-B

Current Setup

Laser

Beam Splitter

Position Sensitive Photodiodes

PSD-A

PSD-B

Basic Geometry

Electronic System

Position Sensitive

Photodiodes (PSD)

Rectifier Circuit

Differential ADC

±15V analog +5V

PIC

XY

XY

SPI

GUI

Mac/PC

USB

Lase

r

Testing Rig

Calibration

Mill with 2-axis CNC Accurite Controller High accuracy

(.0002”) measurements in two dimensions

Characterize PSD response over entire sensor

Test circuit

Deliverables

Optical Bench Setup

The “smarts” made up of software to calculate displacements and a manual

All pieces built and coded to required tolerances

Equations

Images courtesy of Google Images and Goddard Space Flight Center (and Dan Elg)