The TMT Laser Guide Star Facility has successfully completed its Preliminary Design Review and is advancing to the Final Design Phase. The review was held on 8–9 November 2023 at the TMT International Observatory Project Office and was conducted by a panel consisting of external and internal experts.
A kickoff meeting was recently held for the TMT Secondary Mirror Support System and Positioner Assembly (M2SSP), a critical subsystem of the TMT Observatory. Responsible for safely supporting and adjusting the rigid body motion of the secondary mirror (M2), the M2SSP encompasses all of the secondary mirror system hardware, minus the mirror itself, as well as the controls and safety systems.
Coherent installs an advanced ultrasonic machine tool to speed hexing of the 1.5 m diameter Thirty Meter Telescope mirror segments.
On 18 July 2023, Sergio Salata, Astronomy Project Manager of Added Value Solutions (AVS) in Tenerife, visited the TMT office to tell us about the astronomy projects and other science equipment development projects the AVS company had been involved with. His short talk and discussions with project staff covered astronomy instrumentation, cooling, cryostats, opto-mechanics and other topics of relevance to TMT development.
An important component of TMT’s Primary Mirror Control Sensing System and the Alignment and Phasing System is progressing to its final design and qualification stage: the sensor dust boots.
Exciting news out of India: TMT’s Primary Mirror Segment Polishing and Metrology Equipment have been successfully installed in the India-TMT Optics Fabrication Facility. The Stress Mirror Polishing machines and metrology tools involved in the production of TMT’s aspherical polished mirrors (aka roundels) were shipped to India to be installed and tested over several months.
How will TMT make its 492 primary mirror segments behave as a single mirror of 30 meter diameter? TMT’s Alignment and Phasing System (APS) team has come up with the solution that will keep all of TMT’s mirrors aligned to a high precision of about 10 nm root-mean-square (RMS).
TMT’s Optics and M1 Segment Support Assemblies (SSA) is ready to enter production following a successful Fabrication Readiness Review that assessed the production of the hardware required to support the primary mirror segments. Larsen and Toubro (L&T), which is supplying the SSAs, is now one step closer to start production and shall proceed with the procurement of raw material.
The second TMT India roundel has been completed! The roundel was polished at the Coherent facilities in Richmond, California by the India TMT Coordination Centre (ITCC) staff, using ITCC equipment under the supervision of Coherent’s staff.
A few months ago, TMT Optical engineers traveled to the Netherlands to support the Dutch company TNO install a TMT Segment Support Assembly (SSA) onto an SSA Module Acceptance Test Tool (SMATT). This is an important step in the design and construction of the M1 optics system, a 492-segment primary mirror for the TMT.
