RadioAstron Monthly Notices

October-November, 2003

 

Tasks and developments completed by the ASC

 

1.       General meeting on project status and development was held on November 18-21. The Minutes of the Meeting will be issued soon.

2.       After adjustment of the SRT petals on the parallactic mounting in Pushchino all equipment was connected with the test set devices and functional tests were conducted.

3.       Now the assembled system is subjected to radio astronomical measurements through the boresighting on the calibration radio sources.

4.       In order to select perspective sources for future study with RadioAstron, radio astronomical measurements of polarization parameters for about 100 of maser OH radio sources have been conducted with Nance radio telescope.

 

Tasks and developments completed in Lavochkin Association

 

1.       All engineering models of scientific equipment were assembled in the configurations for tests in Pushchino. The SRT was attached to special supporting frame (weight compensator), and LNA cooling system (NSOTR) was installed on the Focal Container.

2.       Adjustment of the SRT petals relative to weight compensator was completed; it was based on the measurements of the resulting surface accuracy (0.5 mm RMS).

3.       The engineering model of the SRT was folded, packed and transported to Pushchino.

4.       The engineering model of the SRT was assembled on the parallactic mounting.

5.       Adjustment of the SRT petals relative to weight compensator was conducted again using theodolits; the resulting surface accuracy was found to be about 0.5 mm (RMS).

 

Appendix - a list of used acronyms

 

ASC Astro Space Center of Lebedev Physical Instutute

Cold Plate cooled LNAs and antenna feed

DC hermetic device container (part of payload); it contains Formatter,

Rb oscillators, synthesizer, control unit and is placed under dish

DM Device Module = DC + H-maser

EGSE Electronic Ground Support Equipment

Electronic Complex all SRT electronics

EM Engineering Model

FC Focal Container - hermetic package with the scientific payload;

it contains receivers, microwave synthesizer, control unit

and is placed in focal site of dish

FM Focal Module = Focal Container+Cold Plate

LA Lavochkin Association

OHCFS-SRT Space Radio Telescope On-board Heterodyne

and Clock Frequency Synthesizer set

OHFS-SRT Space Radio Telescope On-board Hydrogen Frequency Standard

ORFS-SRT Space Radio Telescope On-board Rubidium Frequency Standard

Service Module, Spacecraft bus - spacecraft itself (without payload).

SRT Space Radio Telescope (all scientific payload including 10-m dish)

TMS Spacecraft Telemetry System (technical)

TVT Thermo-Vacuum Tests

VIRK Scientific high rate (up to 2x72 Mbit/s) radio complex,

including transponder

ZBIT Zero Baseline Interferometer Tests (ZBIT)