Composite Telescope Baffle

Mentis Sciences developed a novel fabrication approach to produce thin-walled, lightweight baffle designed to minimize radiation on SM-3 Kill Vehicle (KV) IR seeker applications. Mentis' composite baffle was designed to:

Replace conventional sunshade structures with lightweight, physically robust structure to withstand high stress environments of launch and flight maneuvering.
Reduce KV weight
Eliminate conventional tripod structure in the KV
Substantially reduce off axis-radiation contributing to seeker detector noise with a goal on-axis blockage no greater than 7%

This six-month research effort was designed to produce a novel fabrication method of fabricating and assembling hexagonal channels. Ultimately, Mentis went beyond the statement of work and developed a fabrication technique capable of producing multiple full-sized baffles with on-axis blockages of approximately 5%, minimal weight, and with a predicted CTE near zero.