SESDA Engineers Produce “Transparent Copper”
January 2, 2013
In a significant milestone for Goddard’s upcoming Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER) mission, a team of SESDA engineers have completed the first of three flight polarizers. These are the first optical element in the PIPER instrument, as there is no window in the cryogenic open optics configuration for this suborbital balloon mission. The polarizer comprises 3581 wires, each 36µm in diameter, spaced 110µm apart, over a clear aperture of 40cm, in a unit that will operate at 1.5K. The polarizers will have a moving mirror behind them to modulate the polarized sky signal, in a configuration referred to as a Variable Polarization Modulator. This is also known as "transparent copper", with over a mile of wire placed with micron-level precision!
