Prototyping Key Elements of the On-Instrument Wavefront Sensor for GMTIFS

This study is intended to address one of the principal risk areas. The identified risk is that the performance of the COTS deformable mirror (DM) at temperatures below 253K does not meet the vendor specifications, which are stated at room temperature (-295K). Cooling the DM is required to reduce its thermal emission to a level that is Jess than or comparable to other surfaces and noise sources within the instrument.This risk area is to be addressed by prototyping hardware. Ideally, the hardware will be used in thedelivered instrument, but scaled-down or engineering grade components may be used if they can be shown to be representative of the final hardware. The results of this study will merge with the development of the GMTIFS instrument development, in preparation for procurement and fabrication. These results will also be used to inform the design of the OIWFS for the GMT Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GMTNIRS) being developed at the University of Texas.