Researchers from California Institute of Technology are proposing the idea of a modular space telescope that could be assembled by robots. The space observatory would have a primary mirror with a diameter of 100 meters — 40 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope.

The design calls for the use of more than 300 deployable truss modules. The pieces could then be unfolded to form a scaffolding upon which a commensurate number of small mirror plates could be placed to create a large segmented mirror.

The assembly of the scaffolding and the attachment of the many mirrors is a task well-suited to robots, according to Caltech's Sergio Pellegrino and his colleagues.

A spider-like, six-armed "hexbot" would assemble the trusswork and then crawl across the structure to build the mirror.

The hexbot, modeled on Jet Propulsion Laboratory's RoboSimian search-and-rescue system, would run on electrical power from the telescope's solar grid.

The robot would use four of its arms to walk — with one leg moving at any given time, while the three others remain securely attached to the structure. The two remaining arms would be free to assemble the trusses and mirrors.

The realization of such an assembly is still decades away. Pellegrino and his colleagues, however, are already working on the various technologies that will be needed to make it possible.

The entire space observatory would be composed of the fully assembled mirror-and-truss structure and three other parts, flying in formation. An optics and instrumentation unit would be located about 400 meters from the mirror; a control unit, stationed about 400 meters beyond that, would align the system; and a thin shade, roughly 20 meters in diameter, would shield the mirror from the sun to keep its temperature stable and consistent across its diameter.

The four-part assembly would be stationed at one of the sun–earth Lagrange points — locations between the sun and the earth where the pull of gravity from two bodies locks a satellite into orbit with them. There, the space observatory could peer deep into space without drifting out of place.

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