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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. [1]
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2023) |
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. [1]
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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.
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. [2]
A 2025 study by the Technion in Israel concluded that while maneuvering the telescope to point at different points in space will cause tiny ripples on the surface of the mirror, the effect would be very slow, and the inner 80% of the aperture will still be optically functional even after 10 years of regular operation. [3]