Solar Sail Fresnel Zone Plate Lens for a Large Space Based Telescope

摘要

A Fresnel zone plat lens made with solar sail material could be used as the primary optic for a very large aperture telescope on deep space probes propelled by solar sails. The large aperture telescope capability could enable significant science on fly-by missions to the asteroids, Pluto, Kuiper belt or the tort cloud and could also enable meaningful interstellar fly-by missions for laser propelled sails. This type of lens may also have some potential for laser communications and as a solar concentrator. The techniques for fabrication of meter size and larger Fresnel phase plate optics are under development at LLNL, and we are extending this technology to amplitude zone plates made from sail materials. Corrector optics to greatly extend the bandwidth of these Fresnel optics will be demonstrated in the future. This novel telescope concept will require new understanding of the fabrication, deployment and control of gossamer space structures. It will also require new materials technology for fabricating these optics and understanding their long term stability in a space environment.