Actuator Usage and Fault Tolerance of the James Webb Space Telescope

Actuator Usage and Fault Tolerance of the James Webb Space Telescope Optical Telescope Element Mirror Actuators Allison A. Barto, D. Scott Acton, Paul Finley, Benjamin B. Gallagher, Bruce Hardy, J. Scott Knight, Paul A. Lightsey Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. 1600 Commerce Street Boulder, CO 80301, USA paper 8442-88 SPIE Symposium on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave Conference Amsterdam, Netherlands 01 - 06 July 2012

Abstract The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) telescope’s secondary mirror and eighteen primary mirror segments are each actively controlled in rigid body position via six hexapod actuators. The mirrors are stowed to the mirror support structure to survive the launch environment and then must be deployed 12.5 mm to reach the nominally deployed position before the Wavefront Sensing & Control (WFS&C) alignment and phasing process begins. The actuation system is electrically, but not mechanically redundant. Therefore, with the large number of hexapod actuators, the fault tolerance of the OTE architecture and WFS&C alignment process has been carefully considered. The details of the fault tolerance will be discussed, including motor life budgeting, failure signatures, and motor life. 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 2

JWST Structure & Mirrors Must Deploy In-Flight JWST’s size necessitates the telescope be stowed for launch in a folded configuration and deployed in flight Individual mirror segments must then have sufficient range to Primary Mirror Segments (PMSAs) and Secondary Mirror Segment (SMA) are stowed to withstand launch loads They must deploy 12.5 mm to reach nominal deployed configuration prior to beginning Wavefront Sensing & Control Commissioning 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 3

Considering Motor Failure Given that Primary and Secondary Mirrors each begin 12.5 mm from their nominal operating position, it is necessary to assess – Likelihood of failure / motor life – Ability to predict early onset of failure during life of each motor – Expected life if onset of failure is not detected prior to launch – Impact of motor failure on mission performance should it occur in flight – General consideration of fault tolerance in JWST alignment plans Mirror motors are electrically, but not mechanically redundant – Complete motor failure is considered in this presentation 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 4

Actuator Range and Use Budgeting Actuator use in flight is dependent on: – Range to deploy to nominal mirror positions (12.5 mm) – Total range from the nominal deployed position needed to compensate for segment and system-level manufacturing tolerances – Efficiency of the Wavefront Sensing and Control (WFS&C) process to reach the final positions Actuator use during ground I&T must also be considered for – Motor build and run-in – Subsystem-level I&T Stow/deploy mirrors for optical testing Motor use to verify range and resolution of hexapod actuation system – System I&T 2012.07.06 Confirm functionality after integration Stow/deploy mirrors for optical testing both pre/post environmental test & for cryo test Verification of WFS&C processes and calibration of system optical influence functions 8442-88 Page 5

Determining Flight Actuator Usage Actuator use in flight is dependent on: – Range to deploy to nominal mirror positions (12.5 mm) – Total range from the nominal deployed position needed to compensate for segment and system-level manufacturing tolerances Detailed budget has been developed to track the stack-up of all manufacturing tolerances Includes both mirror-placement alignment tolerances on the JWST structure as well as mirror range needed to compensate for optical fabrication tolerances Includes allocations for both the as-measured configuration and the uncertainty with which that final configuration can be measured/known Range to compensate optical figure and system-level alignment is determined via system Monte Carlo alignment analyses – Efficiency of the Wavefront Sensing and Control (WFS&C) process to reach 8442-88the Page 6 2012.07.06

Determining Flight Actuator Usage Actuator use in flight is dependent on: – Range to deploy to nominal mirror positions (12.5 mm) – Total range from the nominal deployed position needed to compensate for segment and system-level manufacturing tolerances – Efficiency of the Wavefront Sensing and Control (WFS&C) process to reach the final positions 2012.07.06 Monte Carlo alignment analysis performed utilizing JWST WFS&C ground software and flight alignment processes “Segment Update Requests” from this analysis were interrogated to determine motor usage This motor use was then evaluated for each commissioning step to create a baseline flight process flow including conservatively estimating the number of iterations through each step should the system deploy near the edges of the tolerance stack-up described earlier Mirror range corrected at each step was allocated based on the total allocated tolerance stack-up Final flight motor usage by flight phase: 8442-88 Page 7

Predicting Actuator Life if Early Signs of Failure are Detected Through successive iterations of JWST mirror gearmotor design and process control investigation, several motors were run to failure or onset of failure Failures induced have all been bearing failures due to the introduction of debris into the bearing In all instances, early signs of failure can be detected by plotting pull out current vs. number of gearmotor cycles Typical plot shows three regimes: – linear increase in pull-out current – exponential increase in pull-out current – near vertical increase in pull-out current Data from the exponential portion of this curve for 10 failure cases was fit to a Weibull distribution to estimate the mean time from onset of failure to motor failure (defined as pull-out current 0.4 amps) For a single actuator, if pull-out current begins to rise, indicating onset of failure, the motor has a 95% chance of continuing to operate for 277,000 revolutions before failure If early indication of motor failure is not caught prior to launch, likely still have 4-5x margin between required flight motor life ( 60,000 revs) and remaining motor life (277,000 revs) 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 8

Consideration of Failure Scenarios Failure prior to subsystem delivery to Telescope I&T All hexapod motors are reworked with fresh bearings as the last step before delivery to system I&T Motor rework process includes screening and acceptance test to show motor health Only motor use following health tests above is to stow the mirror (10,000 revs) Failure during system I&T Conservative motor use budget for system I&T is 214,000 revs for SMA motors and 250,000 revs for PMSA motors Pull-out current is monitored periodically during the test phase as plotted to look for early indicator of motor failure If necessary, motors could be reworked prior to launch Outer segments more readily accessible than inner segments Would consider pull-out current signature vs. remaining ground/flight motor use Failure in flight – dependent on commissioning phase: Prior to deployment During commissioning Segment Location & Positioning Segment-Level Wavefront Control Global Phasing 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 9

Motor Failure Prior to Deployment SMA failure prior to or during the majority of deployment would be catastrophic due to the high sensitivity of telescope focal surface position to SMA despace position Impact of a PMSA motor failure much more benign and can be accommodated with only minor degradation to telescope performance Would use remaining 5 hexapod actuators and radius of curvature actuator to align the failed segment to the remaining 17 segments in tilt and focus Results in a deterministic PSF that can be deconvolved from science images to mitigate the effect of the failure Effect of this on system performance, without taking advantage of deconvolution, is 11% impact to Strehl and 14% impact to encircled energy (shown above) 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 10

Motor Failure During Commissioning Corrections During Each Phase Segment Location & Positioning Phase Majority of PMSA tilt error corrected during this phase Significant SMA piston errors corrected during this phase as necessary Segment-Level Wavefront Control Global Alignment provides correction of segment-level alignment errors and PMSAlevel astigmatism Majority of PMSA piston, decenter, clocking alignment errors corrected Coarse MIMF uses data from across NIRCam FoV to find best global position for the SMA Majority of SMA tilt and decenter corrected here as long as NIRCam provides a good representation of ISIM alignment Global Phasing If assumptions above regarding Coarse MIMF are valid, segments motions will be no more than a few hundred microns during Global Phasing If Coarse MIMF assumptions are not correct, millimeter-class adjustments of SMA decenter/tilt could be required during this phase Continued heavy use of the SMA is expected during this phase as commissioning iterates through Global Alignment (requires SMA motion /- 400 um) and MultiInstrument Multi-Field (MIMF) (requires SMA motion /- 100 um) 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 11

Motor Failure During Commissioning Mitigating Considerations Calculations of required motor use in baseline commissioning plan assume all degrees of freedom are used to best-optimize telescope performance Utilizing only PMSA strong degrees of freedom (despace/tilt) still provides compensation of low-order system errors with minor degradation to performance If a motor were to fail or if there was concern over a particular motor, decision could be made to only use strong degrees of freedom Current plan corrects strong degrees of freedom during the first iterations of Global Alignment and saves the weak degrees of freedom for later in the process Most significant corrections made earlier in motor life If SMA (needed for Global Alignment sensing) has motor failure during the process, lesser impact to not iterating through global alignment to correct weak degrees of freedom 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 12

Motor Failure During Commissioning Mitigating Considerations Generally WFS&C process always improves the state of the Observatory with a few notable exceptions; decision tree is closely followed to ensure consideration of necessity is made prior to large moves that could temporarily degrade the state of the telescope SMA use of /- 400 um during Global Alignment sensing Potential large decenter/tilt of SMA during MIMF in Global Phasing Because SMA is on-axis clocking orientation need not be controlled, allowing significant motion to recover from a failure at /- 400 um from the ideal despace position and allowing large decentration to correct SMA global position in the presence of a motor failure SMA Hexapod. Z 0 mm 10 0.4 8 Allowable Y Moves, one Failed Actuator (mm) Allowable Z Moves, one Failed Actuator (mm) SMA Hexapod 0.5 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 Z at Actuator Failure (mm) 0 2 4 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 -10 -5 6 -4 -3 -2 SMA Hexapod. Z 0 mm Allowable X Moves, one Failed Actuator (mm) Allowable X Moves, one Failed Actuator (mm) 3 4 5 2 3 4 5 1.5 1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 -5 2 SMA Hexapod. Z -5.25 mm 2 2012.07.06 -1 0 1 Y at Actuator Failure (mm) -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 X at Actuator Failure (mm) 2 3 4 5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 X at Actuator Failure (mm) 8442-88 Page 13

Motor Life Expectations Historically JWST has had successive gearmotor design improvements for reliability and life Motor history shows variability in life performance between motors, implying process variability FRB investigation of 2011 qual tests uncovered several processing steps allowing variability in final motors that lead to debris generation from the steel ribbon retainer, causing motor failure Final gearmotor design added process controls to eliminate sources of variability; steel ribbon retainer generating the debris was replaced with PGM-HT crown retainer Qualification testing of 6 units (3 run to 2x life, 3 run to 7x life) show the design and process improvements implemented have significantly improved life and variability such that motor life should no longer be a concern for JWST 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 14

Summary Careful planning has been implemented for the limited life resource of the mirror motors There is a robust understanding of the expected motor use – both in flight and I&T Monitoring plan is in place to assess motor health during I&T and prior to launch I&T usage of motors has been minimized as practical Analysis of failure data shows the number motor revs needed to complete flight deployment and WFS&C commissioning is 4-5x less than the available revs between detectable onset of failure and motor failure Impact of motor failure in flight has been assessed by motor phase – During majority of commissioning process motor failure poses only limited risk to Observatory performance Decision tree process is in place when considering large changes in configuration late in the commissioning process that could result in temporary degradation to Observatory Performance Qualification data from final motor design shows robust motor design and assembly process has been put in place – Shows no degradation in motor performance after 7x life 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 15

Acknowledgements & References Acknowledgments Work was supported in part by the Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. subcontract with Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems under the JWST contract NAS5-02200 with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center The JWST system is a collaborative effort involving NASA, ESA, CSA, and the astronomy community References [1] Knight, J. S, et al., “Observatory Alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope,” SPIE 8442-131, these proceedings (2012). [2] http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue14/relbasics14.htm. [3] Lloyd Schlitzer, “Monte Carlo Evaluation and Development of Weibull Analysis Techniques”, ASLE Transactions,Vol. 9, Iss. 4, 1966. [4] Jessica Gersh-Range, et al, “Minimizing the Wavefront Error Degradation for Primary Mirror Segments with Failed Hexapod Actuators”, Opt. Eng. 51, 011005 (2012). [5] Knight, J. S. “Effect of Single Segment Failure to Deploy (Maverick Segment), Rev B,” JWST Technical Document 06-JWST-0410. [6] D. Scott Acton, et. al., “Wavefront Sensing and Controls for the James Webb Space Telescope,” SPIE 8442-087, these proceedings (2012). [7] Gallagher, Ben, “JWST Gearmotor FRB Final Summary Report,” Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. JWST Systems Engineering Report (2012). 2012.07.06 8442-88 Page 16