Thermomechanical design optimization and acceptance of the wide-angle camera for the Rosetta mission

The WAC is a telescope developed by University of Padova for the OSIRIS experiment, mainly composed by two instruments, Narrow Angle Camera and Wide Angle Camera, and the related electronics. The payload will fly on board of the Rosetta ESA scientific mission, that will be flown to encounter Comet Wirtanen after about 10 years of flight in 2013. WAC main scientific objectives are to follow structure evolution in the coma and monitor their dynamics. To fulfil scientific requirements, the optical characteristics of the WAC telescope may be summarized as follows: wide field of view of 12° X 12°, focal length of 140 mm, operate in the wave-length range 240-1000nm after 10 years in space, Encircled Energy greater then 70% over the entire FoV, contrast ratio of 10-4 to detect coma activities against a bright nucleus, minimum exposure time of 10 msec with a repeatability better than 1/500, scattered light rejection for sources inside and outside FoV[1]. This paper deals with the design optimization of critical parts and acceptance test campaign performed to validate the thermo-structural behavior of the WAC The functional and performance tests carried out at experiment and system level demonstrated the overall capability of the telescope to satisfy the system and scientific requirements.