Revolutionary Rollable Membrane Mirrors for Space Telescopes.
A new method to produce extremely large telescope mirrors that are thinner, lighter and more affordable than many of the optics currently in orbit has been developed by Sebastian Rabien, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. Rabien built a mirror 0.9 feet (30 centimeters) wide using a new technique that creates membrane mirrors that are flexible enough to be rolled up. The method has the potential to create mirrors that scale beyond the sizes of those onboard current space telescopes, enabling space-based telescopes that are orders of magnitude more sensitive than ones currently deployed or being planned.