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DARPA shoots for 20 meter folding space telescope
The DARPA MOIRE program will create the first-ever images using lightweight membrane optics, which could help redefine how we build, launch and use orbital telescopes.
Currently in its second and final phase, the program recently successfully demonstrated a ground-based prototype that incorporated several critical technologies, including new lightweight polymer membrane optics to replace glass mirrors. Membrane optics traditionally have been too inefficient to use in telescope optics. MOIRE has achieved a technological first for membrane optics by nearly doubling their efficiency, from 30 percent to 55 percent. The improved efficiency enabled MOIRE to take the first images ever with membrane optics.
While the membrane is less efficient than glass, which is nearly 90 percent efficient, its much lighter weight enables creating larger lenses that more than make up the difference. The membrane is also substantially lighter than glass. Based on the performance of the prototype, a new system incorporating MOIRE optics would come in at roughly one-seventh the weight of a traditional system of the same resolution and mass. As a proof of concept, the MOIRE prototype validates membrane optics as a viable technology for orbital telescopes.
MOIRE would have 70 times the collecting area of the Hubble and would have over 8 times the diamter
Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/darpa-shoots-for-20-meter-folding-space.html
