Air-LUSI: A robotic telescope design for lunar spectral measurements

This paper presents the mechanical design of a new robotic telescope that was designed and built to acquire lunar spectral measurements from the science pod of NASA's ER-2 aircraft while flying at an altitude of 70,000 feet (21.34 km). The robotic telescope used a double gimbal design that allowed for target tracking in azimuth and elevation. In addition to the challenging and restrictive geometry of the science pod, each component needed to be …