The FLUTE study is developing a fluidic space telescope concept that will have several advantages over traditional solid mirror telescopes. Led by Edward Balaban at NASA’s Ames Research Center, FLUTE envisions the use of fluidic shaping of ionic liquids to create massive mirrors. The fluidic telescope could help NASA observe its top-priority targets , Balaban says, all of which happen to be exceedingly faint, and include such celestial objects as young galaxies, Earth-like exoplanets, and even first-generation stars. Building larger telescopes is the conventional manner by which scientists would finally see such indistinct interests in space, but traditional solid mirror telescopes with aperture diameters larger than 10 metres don’t appear to be economically viable.
Thus, with the FLUTE concept, the study’s ambition is to create a cost-effective space telescope design that could view the targets. Balaban explains that FLUTE envisions the use of a large aperture, unsegmented liquid primary mirror, built with fluidic shaping in microgravity — technology that has been tested in a variety of environments. The technique is said to be theoretically scale-invariant, and capable of producing sub-nanometer surface quality optical components.
Despite such technology being scale-invariant, Balaban states, “In order to make the concept feasible to implement in the next 15-20 years with near-term technologies and realistic cost, we limit the diameter of the primary mirror to 50 meters.” To put that into perspective, the largest space-based telescope to date — the James Webb Space Telescope — has a 6.5-metre-wide primary mirror. With the stunning imagery the James Webb telescope has already shown us, we can’t help but be excited about FLUTE.
