Abstract
One of the pressing needs for the UV-Vis is an affordable design that allows larger mirrors than the JWST primary. In this publication we report the results of the first year of a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Phase II study. Our project is called A Precise Extremely large Reflective Telescope Using Reconfigurable Elements (APERTURE). The concept is to deploy a continuous membrane-like mirror. The mirror figure will be corrected after deployment, causing the figure error to decrease below λ/20. While the basic concept is not new, our innovation lies in a different approach to correcting the residual figure errors from the classical piezoelectricpatch technology. Instead, our concept is based on a contiguous coating of a magnetic smart material (MSM). After deployment, a magnetic write head will move along the non-reflecting side of the mirror. The magnetic field will produce a stress in the MSM which then corrects the mirror shape. This publication summarizes the results of minimizing the MSM deposition stress as well as the size and stability of the deformation, which is maintained by a magnetically hard material.
