Eyeglass: A Very Large Aperture Diffractive Space Telescope

Details Eyeglass: A Very Large Aperture Diffractive Space Telescope Eyeglass: A Very Large Aperture Diffractive Space Telescope

Dec 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002spie.4849...28h&link_type=abstract

Highly Innovative Space Telescope Concepts Edited by Howard A. MacEwen. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 4849, pp. 28-39 2002.

Physics

Optics

1

Scientific paper

Eyeglass is a very large aperture (25 - 100 meter) space telescope consisting of two distinct spacecraft, separated in space by several kilometers. A diffractive lens provides the telescope's large aperture, and a separate, much smaller, space telescope serves as its mobile eyepiece. Use of a transmissive diffractive lens solves two basic problems associated with very large aperture space telescopes; it is inherently fieldable (lightweight and flat, hence packagable and deployable) and virtually eliminates the traditional, very tight, surface shape tolerances faced by reflecting apertures. The potential drawback to use of a diffractive primary (very narrow spectral bandwidth) is eliminated by corrective optics in the telescope's eyepiece. The Eyeglass can provide diffraction-limited imaging with either single-band, multiband, or continuous spectral coverage. Broadband diffractive telescopes have been built at LLNL and have demonstrated diffraction-limited performance over a 40% spectral bandwidth (0.48 - 0.72 μm). As one approach to package a large aperture for launch, a foldable lens has been built and demonstrated. A 75 cm aperture diffractive lens was constructed from 6 panels of 1 mm thick silica; it achieved diffraction-limited performance both before and after folding. This multiple panel, folding lens, approach is currently being scaled-up at LLNL. We are building a 5 meter aperture foldable lens, involving 72 panels of 700 μm thick glass sheets, diffractively patterned to operate as coherent f/50 lens.

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