Conceptual design studies of the 5 m terahertz antenna for Dome A, Antarctica

As the highest, coldest and driest place in Antarctica, Dome A provides exceptionally good observing conditions for ground-based observations over terahertz wavebands. The 5 m Dome A Terahertz Explorer （DATES） has been proposed to explore new terahertz windows, primarily over wavelengths between 350 and 200 pm. DATE5 will be an open-air, fully-steerable telescope that can function by unmanned operation with remote control. The telescope will be able to endure the harsh polar environment, including high altitude, very low temperature and very low air pressure. The unique specifications, including high accuracies for surface shape and pointing and fully automatic year-around remote operation, along with a stringent limit on the periods of on-site assembly, testing and maintenance, bring a number of challenges to the design, construction, assembly and operation of this telescope. This paper intro- duces general concepts related to the design of the DATE5 antenna. Beginning from an overview of the environmental and operational limitations, the design specifications and requirements of the DATE5 antenna are listed. From these, major aspects on the conceptual design studies, including the antenna optics, the backup structure, the pan- els, the subreflector, the mounting and the antenna base structure, are explained. Some critical issues of performance are justified through analyses that use computational fluid dynamics, thermal analysis and de-icing studies, and the proposed approaches for test operation and on-site assembly. Based on these studies, we conclude that the specifications of the DATE5 antenna can generally be met by using enhanced technological approaches.

Panel positioning error and support mechanism for a 30-m THz radio telescope

A 30-m TeraHertz（THz） radio telescope is proposed to operate at 200 μm with an active primary surface.This paper presents sensitivity analysis of active surface panel positioning errors with optical performance in terms of the Strehl ratio.Based on Ruze＇s surface error theory and using a Monte Carlo simulation,the effects of six rigid panel positioning errors,such as piston,tip,tilt,radial,azimuthal and twist displacements,were directly derived.The optical performance of the telescope was then evaluated using the standard Strehl ratio.We graphically illustrated the various panel error effects by presenting simulations of complete ensembles of full reflector surface errors for the six different rigid panel positioning errors.Study of the panel error sensitivity analysis revealed that the piston error and tilt/tip errors are dominant while the other rigid errors are much less important.Furthermore,as indicated by the results,we conceived of an alternative Master-Slave Concept-based（MSC-based） active surface by implementating a special Series-Parallel Concept-based（SPC-based） hexapod as the active panel support mechanism.A new 30-m active reflector based on the two concepts was demonstrated to achieve correction for all the six rigid panel positioning errors in an economically feasible way.

Conceptual Design of the Aluminum Reflector Antenna for DATE5

DATE5, a 5 m telescope for terahertz exploration, was proposed for acquiring observations at Dome A, Antarctica. In order to observe the terahertz spectrum, it is necessary to maintain high surface accuracy in the the antenna when it is exposed to Antarctic weather conditions. Structural analysis shows that both machined aluminum and carbon fiber reinforced plastic （CFRP） panels can meet surface accuracy requirements. In this paper, one design concept based on aluminum panels is introduced. This includes panel layout, details on panel support, design of a CFRP backup structure, and detailed finite element analysis. Modal, gravity and thermal analysis are all performed and surface deformations of the main reflector are evaluated for all load cases. At the end of the paper, the manufacture of a prototype panel is also described. Based on these results, we found that using smaller aluminum reflector panels has the potential to meet the surface requirements in the harsh Dome A environment.