A novel process to fabricate mirrors with very long radius and ultra smooth surfaces

摘要

During the course of performing space flight qualification testing of composite mirrors at NASA GSFC, a serendipitous event was observed which, in retrospect, should have been obvious. Investigation of this phenomenon leads to a promising avenue towards the fabrication of large aperture precision spherical mirrors with very long radius of curvature (>f/100). Such mirrors are required for future missions such as the Stellar Imager. We report on the observation and analysis of the event, optical measurements, and the development of associated active figure control systems.