A liquid-mirror space telescope is a concept for a reflecting space telescope that uses a reflecting liquid such as mercury as its primary reflector.

Design

There are several designs for such a telescope: Regardless of the specific configuration, such a telescope would be similar to an Earth-based liquid-mirror telescope. However, instead of relying on Earth's gravity to maintain the necessary parabolic shape of the rotating mercury mirror, it relies on artificial gravity instead. Other possibilities for inducing a parabolic shape in the reflecting liquid include: The concept is seen as an enabler of very large optical space telescopes, as a liquid mirror would be much cheaper to construct than a conventional glass mirror of comparable performance.

History

In April 2022, NASA reported that they would conduct the Fluidic Telescope Experiment (FLUTE) in the ISS, which would be part of the Axiom Mission 1 astronaut Eytan Stibbe's research portfolio. The research would test liquid lens by using water injected by polymers in microgravity through utilizing buoyancy to even gravitational forces and cause weightlessness, to be later hardened by UV light or temperature in-orbit.