The telescope optical unit prototype AIV in the framework of the PLATO ESA mission

PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is a new space telescope selected by ESA to detect terrestrial exoplanets in nearby solar-type stars. The telescope is composed by 26 small telescopes to achieve a large instantaneous field of view. INAF-OAPD is directly involved in the optical design and in the definition and testing of the alignment strategy. A prototype of the Telescope Optical Unis (TOU) was assembled and integrated in warm condition (room temperature) and then the performance is tested in warm and cold temperature (-80C). The mechanical structure of the TOU is representative in terms of thermal expansion coefficient and Young's modulus with respect to the actual one. A dedicated GSE (Ground Support Equipment) is used to manipulate the lenses. By co-align an interferometer and a laser with respect to the center of the third CaF2 lens, a several observables references are used to define the position and tilt of the chief ray. The total procedure tolerances for every lens is 30'' in tilt, between 15-40 μm for focus and 22 μm for decentering and the total error budget of the optical setup bench is below this requirement. In this paper, we describe the AIV procedure and test performed on the prototype of the TOU in the INAF laboratory.