LawrenceLivermore,BallAerospaceandTechnologies.pdfVIP

Research Highlights STR January/February 2013 Lawrence Livermore, Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation, and NeXolve Corporation are preparing diffractive membrane optics for the Membrane Optic Imager Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE) project. Developing Lightweight Optics for Space general rule for telescopes is that bigger is better. Improving When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s A our ability to view dim and distant objects, or see finer details next-generation James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2018, on nearer objects, requires a telescope with better resolution and it will have a segmented aperture with a diameter of 6.5 meters— more light-gathering power, which generally means a bigger seven times the light-collecting area of the Hubble Space aperture. With no atmospheric distortion to affect the resolution Telescope. As early as 1996, though, Lawrence Livermore of large-aperture space-based telescopes, the sky is the limit. physicist Rod Hyde was working on a design that would take Scientists are only restricted by the practicalities of device advantage of the Laboratory’s expertise in optics design and fabrication and transportation. Because the materials must be fabrication to put a much larger telescope—with a 20-meter- transported to space at great cost and effort, strict limits are diameter aperture—into space. (See STR, March 2003, imposed on the size and weight of the telescope optics, structures, pp. 12–18.) To make this possible, Hyde and his colleagues and other components. seemingly took a step backward in telescope technology. 20