Adaptive parabolic membrane mirrors for large deployable space telescopes

A key element for the development of extremely large telescopes in space or balloon-borne observatories will be a reduction in the areal weight of the primary mirror. Large membrane mirrors offer a very low areal weight but are difficult to manufacture with the optical quality needed for astronomical telescopes. This paper demonstrates a practical method to overcome this limitation. In a test chamber we have successfully grown optical quality parabolic membrane mirrors on a rotating liquid in a test chamber. These polymer mirror prototypes of up to 30 cm in diameter show a sufficiently low surface roughness and can be coated with reflective layers. By manipulating the parabolic shape locally using radiative adaptive optics methods, it is shown that imperfections or changes in the shape can be corrected. With only tiny local temperature changes induced by the radiation, many micrometers of stroke have been achieved. Scaling the method investigated to produce mirrors with diameters of many meters is possible using available technology. This approach opens the possibility to produce affordable extremely large primary mirrors for space telescopes. With the flexibility of the membrane material, this type of mirror can be compactly rolled up when stored in the launch vehicle, and then be deployed in space.