Having the Faro set up within reach of all the M2 test gear has made it possible to significantly improve our alignment of the null lens & interferometer with respect to M2.
This has led to cleaner interferograms &, consequently, a growing sense that this just might work - rather well in fact if the preliminary Durango (interferometer software) results are anything to go by...
The interferograms below show the effects of various adjustments made to the null lens & interferometer (including its reference mirror). Our best M2 wavefront so far - similar to that shown in the right-hand image below - had a RMS of 0.18 waves.
The original SAGEM interferogram for M2 was good to nearly 1/20th of a wave RMS. We hope to achieve a similar result, but this may be overly optimistic given that M2 was still a "free range" mirror at that stage - it had yet to be mounted in the SAC cage...
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