Abstract
This chapter reviews the development of the Herschel telescope and shows how the initial concept of FIRST (renamed Herschel in 2000) was ‘undecidable’ (not capable of being told feasible or unfeasible) due to the poor knowledge of how to build it following its introduction in the Horizon 2000 long-term plan. It describes the competition between various industrial concepts, the abandoned NASA concept and how the development of silicon carbide (SiC) mirror technology made it possible to build the largest telescope then ever flown, just fitting in an Ariane 5 fairing. It offers a reflection on the need of major innovations requiring advanced material technologies and innovative mirror structures to go from Herschel to the next generation of high-resolution far-infrared space telescopes.
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Notes
- 1.
To derive the full system sensitivity, many other parameters must also be taken into account such as the intrinsic sensitivity of the instrument or background emission from the instrument and natural environment (atmosphere, space), and (square root of) integration time that will improve it.
- 2.
The root-mean-squared (rms) accuracy of a mirror provides a statistical measure of the departure of the surface from the ideal shape. Note that the FIRST proposal indeed stated 8 μm rms surface accuracy; however this will give you almost 16 μm wave front error (WFE) rms. This does not provide good performance and it was an error in the proposal.
- 3.
A term used more commonly in radio astronomy than in optical/infrared astronomy.
- 4.
The areal density is the ratio of the weight to the surface area of the primary mirror.
- 5.
Matra Espace and Marconi Space System merged in 1990 to become MMS .
- 6.
The technical term full-width half-maximum, or FWHM, is the angular size in an image of a point source on the sky measured at half maximum of its flux intensity. It is approximately equal to the observing wavelength divided by the telescope aperture.
- 7.
The ‘Red Book’ FIRST, Sci (93)6, ESA, 1993.
- 8.
Zerodur® is a low expansion glass ceramic from Schott company. It is an inorganic, non-porous lithium aluminium silicon oxide glass ceramic. It can be provided as small finished components, as ultra-lightweight mirror substrates, but also as mirror substrates for large segmented and monolithic astronomical telescopes.
- 9.
Matra merged with DASA (Deutsche Aerospace until Daimler Chrysler Aerospace AG), DASA following MBB, in 1998 to become Astrium , which in turn became EADS in 2000.
- 10.
This paper was never published and only a draft was available.
- 11.
Note that a clear choice was not made, but aluminium was tried as a preferred option than SiC.
- 12.
Submillimeter Explorer, JPL proposal to NASA , July, 1986.
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Minier, V. et al. (2017). Silicon Carbide Telescope: Radical Innovation. In: Inventing a Space Mission. ISSI Scientific Report Series, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60024-6_6
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