Optical design and in situ fabrication of large telescopes on the Moon

P. C. Chen; R. G. Lyon; M. E. Van Steenberg

doi:10.1117/12.789945

12 July 2008 Optical design and in situ fabrication of large telescopes on the Moon

P. C. Chen, R. G. Lyon, M. E. Van Steenberg

Proceedings Volume 7010, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter; 70104D (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789945
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

We present a novel concept for the optical design and construction of large aperture astronomical telescopes on the Moon. 1. A beam combiner that optically shuffles the 2D non-redundant aperture locations into a 1D non-redundant array and brings them to focus on a spectrometer slit thereby encoding all the spatial frequencies of an image at a given wavelength into a 1D image, but in such a manner that they are separable and hence allowing for construction of a 2D image at each wavelength. 2. A process to fabricate optical and mechanical components of large telescopes in-situ using regolith material. The optical elements can be of any size. The shapes can be flat or curved. The fabrication process employs simple apparatus that can be robotic in nature. No special high temperature or high pressure equipment is required.

Citation Download Citation

P. C. Chen, R. G. Lyon, and M. E. Van Steenberg "Optical design and in situ fabrication of large telescopes on the Moon", Proc. SPIE 7010, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter, 70104D (12 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789945

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