As an alternative, together with his “fluidic telescope” idea, one want solely launch a body construction—resembling an umbrella-shaped satellite tv for pc dish—and a tank of mirror liquid, like gallium alloys and ionic liquids. After launch, the liquid can be injected into the body. In area, droplets stick collectively due to floor stress, and the pesky power of Earth’s gravity doesn’t get in the best way and deform their form. This may end in an extremely easy mirror with out the necessity for mechanical processes like grinding and sharpening, that are used for conventional glass mirrors. It will then be hooked up to the telescope’s different elements via an automatic course of.
Utilizing checks on a airplane and on the Worldwide Area Station, his group has already discovered learn how to make lenses with liquid polymers, and so they decided that the amount of the liquid units the diploma of magnification. With the NIAC funding, they’ll put together for the subsequent step: conducting a take a look at of a small liquid mirror in area later this decade. Their objective is to ultimately design a 50-meter mirror, however since this expertise is scalable, Balaban says one might use the identical bodily rules to engineer a mirror kilometers huge. JWST’s massive mirror makes it probably the most delicate telescopes ever constructed, however, he argues, to maintain making advances, it might be mandatory to construct larger mirrors with this new technique.
Zachary Cordero, an MIT astronautics researcher, leads one other new venture to develop an in-space manufacturing method known as bend-forming. It entails bending a single strand of wire at particular nodes and angles, then including joints to make a stiff construction. Cordero and his group are engaged on a specific software: designing a reflector for a satellite tv for pc in excessive orbit, which might monitor storms and precipitation by measuring moisture modifications within the ambiance.
As with a number of of the opposite winners, his proposal takes on the problem of constructing actually huge issues in area, regardless of the dimensions and weight constraints of rocket journey. “With standard reflectors, the larger you make these items, the more serious the floor precision, and ultimately they’re principally unusable. Folks have been speaking about methods to make 100-meter or kilometer-scale reflectors in area for many years,” he says. With their course of, one might launch sufficient materials for a 100-meter dish on a single rocket, he says.
Among the many different 14 winners: a proposal to deploy a seaplane to fly on Titan, Saturn’s greatest moon, and one for a heated probe to penetrate the ocean of its neighbor, Enceladus, which is enclosed by a thick outer layer of ice that behaves like rock, because of the below-freezing temperatures.
Whereas a few of these initiatives received’t succeed, this system helps NASA take a look at the bounds of what’s possible, LaPointe says: “If a venture fails, it’s nonetheless helpful to us. If it really works, it might remodel future NASA missions.”
