Control and Pointing Challenges of Large Antennas and Telescopes

Extremely large telescopes will be constructed in the near future, and new radiotelescopes will operate at considerably higher radio frequencies; both features create significantly increased pointing accuracy requirements that have to be addressed by control system engineers. This paper presents control and pointing problems encountered during design, testing, and the operation of antennas, radiotelescopes, and optical telescopes. This collection of challenges informs of their current status, helps to evaluate their importance, and is a basis for discussion on the ways of improvement of antenna pointing accuracy