One of the pressing needs for the UV-Vis is a design to allow even larger mirrors than the JWST primary at an affordable cost. We report here the results of a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts phase 1 study. Our project is called A Precise Extremely large Reflective Telescope Using Reconfigurable Elements (APERTURE). The idea is to deploy a continuous membrane-like mirror. The mirror figure will be corrected after deployment to bring it into better or equal lambda/20 deviations from the prescribed mirror shape. The basic concept is not new. What is new is to use a different approach from the classical piezoelectric-patch technology. Instead, our concept is based on a contiguous coating of a so called magnetic smart material (MSM). After deployment a magnetic write head will move on the non-reflecting side of the mirror and will generate a magnetic field that will produce a stress in the MSM that will correct the mirror deviations from the prescribed shape.

Date Published: 29 July 2016
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 9904, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 99041I (29 July 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2231679

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9904:
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave
Howard A. MacEwen; Giovanni G. Fazio; Makenzie Lystrup; Natalie Batalha; Nicholas Siegler; Edward C. Tong, Editor(s)