Design of a rapidly cooled cryogenic mirror

The paper discusses the design, analysis, and testing of a rapidly cooled beryllium cryogenic mirror, which is the primary mirror in the four-element optical system for the Long Wavelength Infrared Advanced Technology Seeker. The mirror is shown to meet the requirement of five minutes for cooling to cryogenic operating temperature; it also maintains its optical figure and vacuum integrity and meets the nuclear specification. Results of a detailed thermal analysis on the mirror showed that, using nitrogen gas at 80 K as coolant, the front face of the mirror can be cooled from an initial temperature of 300 K to less than 90 K within five minutes. In a vacuum chamber, using liquid nitrogen as coolant, the mirror can be cooled to 80 K within 1.5 min. The mirror is well thermally insulated, so that it can be maintained at less than its operating temperature for a long time without active cooling.