Interferogram Stitching applied to the surface metrology of millimeter–wave and micrometer-wave reflectors

This paper addresses the interferometric measurements performed on PLANCK Secondary reflector-Flight Model (SRFM) during the cryo-optical test at the Centre Spatial de Liege in Belgium. It was requested to measure the changes of the surface figure error (SFE) with respect to the best ellipsoid, between 293 K and 50 K, with a 1 μm RMS accuracy. To achieve this, Infra Red interferometry has been selected and a dedicated thermo mechanical set-up has been constructed. One emphasizes on the solutions adopted to cope with high surface slopes appearing at cryogenic temperature. Indeed, detector resolution has been exploited to resolve high density fringes at the expense of the aperture. A stitching procedure has been implemented to reconstruct the full aperture measurement with success. Test results are presented.