Elimination of Print-Through in Adaptively Controlled, Ultra-lightweight CMC Mirror Materials

"Ceracom, Inc. and our industrial team members will demonstrate a revolutionary method for manufacturing reduced cost and light weight (<8 kg/m2) primary mirror structural materials which will not exhibit beam quality degrading print-through. Using asub-scale model we have obtained very promising results, demonstrating the feasibility of using non-mechanical adaptive control to rapidly focus ceramic matrix composite (CMC) mirrors. Ceracom's proposed Phase I and II programs will build upon theseresults, specifically addressing one of the most important technical issues: development and scale-up of processing approaches producing mirrors which maintain figure while eliminating performance limiting print-through. In Phase I we will develop, evaluate and demonstrate processing methods that will eliminate the occurrence of print-through in our micro-engineered CMC materials. In Phase II we will scale-up the CMC processing technology and fabricate a 1 to 1.5primary mirror demonstrator to show the feasibility of the Ceracom deployable mirror and control concepts to meet weight, cost and operational requirements. While the technology scales to the sizes (4 meter and larger petal structures) needed for SBL, atthe 1.5-meter Phase II stage, this "breakthrough" affordable CMC mirror technology will offer improved cost and performance to other systems, like ABL and THEL. Offering vastly reduced manufacturing cycle times and costs, we wil