Corning's Approach to Segment Blank Manufacturing for an Extremely Large Telescope

摘要

It is expected that the next generation of large ground based astronomical telescopes will be built using a segmented primary and secondary mirror versus monolithic blanks. Corning has proposed a process to be used in the manufacturing of segment mirror blanks from Corning ULE~(~R) titania-silica glass in segment sizes ranging from 1.0 to 1.8 meters flat to flat. This paper will describe the facilities, equipment, resources and process required by Corning to produce several hundred to several thousand mirror segment blanks for extremely large telescope mirror blanks.