Techniques for autonomous alignment of beam control systems have been developed for a number of technologies including laser resonators, telescopes, and optical components. These techniques have been designed to perform remote autonomous alignment on space-based optical systems. This paper present an alignment procedure based on a modified Downhill Simplex optimization algorithm using the attributes of the optical system's far-field image as a figure of merit. Investigations using numerical simulations have demonstrated that this methodology is robust and viable as an approach for alignment of the wide field-of-view three-mirror beam expander developed under the Advanced Beam Control System (ABCS) program. Following computer simulations, we conducted laboratory experiments to validate the far-field optimization concept using the ABCS brassboard optical system. The potential utility of far-field optimization to the alignment of other optical systems such as Space-Based Laser is briefly discussed.
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