Diffusion-Bonded CVC SiC for Large UVOIR Telescope Mirrors and Structures

In 2012, the National Research Council called for a new generation of astronomical telescopes to enable discovery of habitable planets, facilitate advances in solar physics, and enable the study of faint structures around bright objects by developing high-contrast imaging and spectroscopic technologies to provide unprecedented sensitivity, field of view, and spectroscopy of faint objects. Large-aperture, lightweight mirrors for UV, Optical and IR (UVOIR) telescopes answer this need. NASA requires low-cost, ultra-stable, large-aperture, normal incidence mirrors with low mass-to-collecting-area ratios. Potential UV/optical missions require 4- to 8- or 16- meter monolithic or segmented primary mirrors with active/passive alignment and control of normal-incidence imaging systems with <10 nm RMS surface figures.