Optical Surfaces Ltd has developed proprietary light weighting techniques that can reduce the weight of a mirror by as much as 60%.
A light weighted mirror produced by Optical Surfaces Ltd.
In spaceborne applications the need to minimise payload is a key factor in designing optical systems. Optical Surfaces lightweight mirrors are designed to provide sufficient rigidity to ensure ultra-high precision optical performance while reducing the overall weight of the mirror. This reduced weight, in turn, allows smaller, lighter support and control structures, reducing the overall cost of optical systems such as space telescopes and spectrographs.
Light weighted mirrors also allow the creation of larger terrestrial telescopes and optical instruments than would be feasible with solid mirrors. Solid mirrors not only can be mechanically cumbersome, but are also difficult to cast and safely cool into a single, large block of optical glass.
Benefiting from a highly stable manufacturing environment and employing proprietary production techniques, Optical Surfaces highly experienced and skilled engineering team are world renowned for producing mirrors with unmatched surface accuracy, surface quality and surface slope errors. Working to strict ISO 9001-2015 guidelines all light weighted mirrors manufactured by Optical Surfaces Ltd are supplied with test data including high accuracy metrology, surface roughness and environmental data.
Source: https://www.optisurf.com/