66 -- HIGH FLUENCE ADAPTIVE OPTICS SYSTEM

Notice Date

April 10, 2001

Contracting Office

Naval Research Laboratory, Code 3220, 4555 Overlook Ave. S.W., Washington, D.C. 20375-5326

ZIP Code

20375-5326

Solicitation Number

N00173-01-R-MS02/0002

Point of Contact

Mary Sandy, Contract Specialist, Code 3220.MS, F. Janilea Bays, Contracting Officer, (202) 767-3710

E-Mail Address

Click here to contact the Contracting Officer via (sandy@contracts.nrl.navy.mil)

Description

The purpose of this amendment is to answer questions from potential offerors, correct a typographic error in amendment 0001 to this combined synopsis/solicitation, and extend the due date for offers. Question 1. The specifications imply that the mirror will be made from an array of steerable flats, yet the requirement is to keep the beam quality as high as possible and the damage threshold to greater than 1.25W/cm2. Since the micro-mirror edges are the most probable sites of damage initiation, would you consider a continuous face sheet design, at the expense of relaxing the angular steering of 30 degrees? Would you then consider a folding flat in conjunction with the adaptive mirror to provide the wide angle steering? Is the mutual coherence of the 121 beams important? If so, how does the design described in the solicitation plan to maintain phase planarity or wavefront control? What element is tasked with piston control, or is the coherence length of the light source so long that only one wave of piston is needed? Answer 1: The Naval Research Laboratory would prefer to have a continuous sheet but the cost is not within our budget. Mutual coherence is not a critical factor, therefore the issues concerning phase planarity and wavefront control which relate to piston control is not a part of our minimum requirement. Question 2: It would help to understand the application of this adaptive mirror. Could you provide some further details on how this mirror will be used? What range will the beamlets be propagated in use? Is the environmental control a part of the mirror specification? Answer 2: The primary application of the adaptive optics as noted in the combined synopsis/solicitation is IR image generation. The adaptive optic module will be incorporated into a simulator, which reproduces the atmospheric transmission effects on certain types of IR patterns, which will be manipulated spatially and temporally. The secondary application is to evaluate the module as a component of an expendable subsystem of an experimental EW device. The goal is to examine the feasibility of replacing several types of mirrors and dichroics in an optical system with a single mirror, which can be reconfigured for different functions. For this application, a greater steering angle would be desirable. The output of one of the configurations is from a diffuser. The number of units needed if the EW device is successful and if the adaptive optics approach is more cost effective than the present design is difficult to predict. Best guess is from several hundred to about a thousand units. Since this is a secondary application, the specifications are more heavily weighted to the image generation application. The environmental temperature specification applies to the heat dissipated by the mirror array module. Question 3: Does this solicitation lead to production quantities in the future? Answer 3: This solicitation does not lead to production quantities in the future. The URL Link that was stated in amendment 0001 is hereby deleted, because it has no relevance to this requirement. The due date for offers is extended to April 23, 2001.

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20010412/66SOL008.HTM (W-100 SN50I7T5)