Disclosed is a made-in-space telescope (52a) comprising primary mirror made by spinning liquid precursor in two orthogonal axes to form a paraboloid surface and subsequently allowing or causing it to solidify. Several mirror material variants are disclosed. Depending on mirror material used, it can be subsequently coated with reflecting coating.Extended/deployed (120a) or formed (130) boom assists in controlling the spin of the telescope for mirror forming.Several telescope embodiments based on the boom design are disclosed.Boom variants include 3-D printed/extruded (130), corrugated (120), telescopic (190a), coiled (192a), folded (193c), taut cable (195a), stiffened cable ((197), and compound boom made with anisotropically pliable elements (198).Several system elements such as primary mirror support (42a), supporting struts (160) and (162), and several boom variants (120), (140), (192a) are made with shape memory materials and deploy from their stowed configurations upon being heated.Heat pipe based implementations are additionally disclosed for heat-activated shape memory system elements.


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    Title :

    MADE-IN-SPACE TELESCOPES


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2024-11-07


    Type of media :

    Patent


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English


    Classification :

    IPC:    G02B Optische Elemente, Systeme oder Geräte , OPTICAL ELEMENTS, SYSTEMS, OR APPARATUS / B64G Raumfahrt , COSMONAUTICS



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