The necessity to reduce the mass and to increase the collecting area requires that the thickness of the optics becomes more and more thinner. Simbol-X was a typical example of this trend. Such thickness makes the shells floppy and therefore unable to maintain the correct shape. During the integration of the shells into the mechanical structure, only negligible deformation must be introduced. The low thickness means also that the shells must be glued on both sides to reach a good stiffness of the whole mirror module and this fact introduces a set of mounting problems. In INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera an integration process has been developed. The use of stiffening rings and of a temporary structure is the key to maintain the right shape of the shell. In this article the results of the integration of the first three prototypes of the Simbol-X optics are presented. The description of the process and the analysis of the degradation of the performances during the integration are shown in detail.

Date Published: 31 August 2009
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 7437, Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy IV, 74371C (31 August 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.826171

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7437:
Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy IV
Stephen L. O'Dell; Giovanni Pareschi, Editor(s)