The benefits of systems engineering are clearly visible in space projects, which are usually distributed over several contributing institutions. For the similarly complex ground-based astronomy project GIRMOS the systems engineering work of the preliminary and critical design phases is presented, including the applied tailoring of typical methods. The resulting requirements flow-down, interface definitions and focus on essential methods could serve as a guideline for resource-limited yet complex projects.
The Gemini Infra-Red Multi-Object Spectrograph (GIRMOS) is a high-resolution integral-field spectroscope and imager being built by a consortium of Canadian universities and institutions, along with the International Gemini Observatory (Gemini) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). The team needed a cost-effective way to bring a degree in Product and Quality Assurance to bear on instrument development, but without availability of a dedicated team. Advice and support from the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Systems Engineering Team enabled GIRMOS to tailor and scale the TMT approach to fit within the available resources of a much smaller project. This Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method more easily allowed geographically distributed subsystem teams to work independently within an agreed-upon FMEA framework that rolled up into a System-level analysis. The TMT FMEA framework reduced the effort involved in all the follow-on work that used the same data set, namely sparing analysis, reliability and uptime analyses, and accelerated life testing.
The Gemini Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph (GIRMOS) is a new facility instrument being designed in close partnership with the upcoming facility adaptive optics (AO) system at Gemini-North observatory called GNAO. GIRMOS will carry out high angular resolution (0.83 – 2.4 µm) imaging and multi-object integral field (0.95 – 2.35 µm) spectroscopy within GNAO’s two arcminute field-of-regard. GIRMOS consists of an imager and four identical deployable integral field spectrographs with a multi-object AO system that provides an additional image quality improvement for each spectrograph over GNAO across the full field. We present the final design overview of GIRMOS, which will be entering the construction phase in 2024 with an expected delivery in 2027. GIRMOS is a pathfinder for future extremely large telescope instrumentation that requires high angular resolution, highly multiplexed spectroscopy.
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