Development of a commercial line of high-performance fast-steering mirrors

Fast-steering mirrors, called FSMs, for short, and sometimes referred to as fine-steering or tip-tilt mirrors, are primarily two-axis devices originally developed for a variety of demanding air and space applications for line-of- sight pointing and beam stabilization. Ball Aerospace has been engaged in the design and development of fast-steering mirrors since 1983. In 1994, Ball began employing lessons learned from these one-of-a-kind custom units to develop a commercial line of low cost ( 10 8 cycles, and the ability to endure high-level random vibration are presented.