Research Article

An active control concept for the TALC space telescope

^a Université Libre de Bruxelles, BEAMS department, 50 av. F.D. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
^b Université de Lyon, CNRS INSA-Lyon, LaMCoS UMR5259, 69621 Villeurbanne, France
^c CEA Saclay, DSM-IRFU-SAP, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette cedex, France

^* e-mail: Christophe.collette@ulb.ac.be

Received: 8 December 2015
Received in final form: 18 November 2016
Accepted: 13 December 2016

Abstract

The paper presents a simplified dynamical model of the TALC telescope. Even though the model is simple, it represents partially the system dynamics, which allowed elaborating preliminary control strategies to damp system resonances. Using active cables, it has been shown that the resonances can be significantly damped, and that the control authority increases as a function of the number of active cables. Additionally, it has been shown that, even with a low value of the control gain, the RMS value of a quantity representative of the optical path difference can be reduced by a factor three.