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Aren't the newest and biggest ground based telescopes made up of many mirrors that have millions of actuators on them to correct for atmospheric distortion? I d
by njarboe 7y ago
Aren't the newest and biggest ground based telescopes made up of many mirrors that have millions of actuators on them to correct for atmospheric distortion? I don't see why you couldn't make similar multi-mirror telescopes in space. Here is a link to an article[1] that shows three of the biggest telescopes that have 7, 798 and 492 individual mirrors respectively. The biggest one has the most mirrors.
[1]https://www.space.com/22505-worlds-largest-telescopes-explained-infographic.html https://www.space.com/22505-worlds-largest-telescopes-explai...
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoYes. You still have to fit it in.
- ISL 7y agoPhysics does not exclude such an instrument. Budget does. Shipping complicated physical hardware to space requires that it absolutely must work on the first try, and never require maintenance for the lifetime of the instrument. In contrast, the large earth-based telescopes can be regularly updated, maintained, and debugged. Access for such activities costs as much as a plane ticket to Chile, instead of a dedicated mission to space.