NASA makes micro-telescopes with carbon

By creating a telescope sensitive to ultraviolet light wavelength range, optical light and infrared light, NASA is now able to discover many things at a low cost by CubeSat satellites.

A team of NASA Goddard scientists are developing a light and low-cost telescope, small enough to fit inside CubeSat satellites. These small satellites are low-cost devices that can send information from outer space.

NASA team of researchers.

This is one of the first telescopes with mirrors designed by small carbon nanotubes. Most mirrors of telescopes are made of aluminum or glass, but the team created nanotubes with carbon embedded in an epoxy resin.

Carbon telescope mirrors do not need to be polished so it will save part of the time and cost for that work. However, the team needs to carry out a series of tests before putting it into official operation, as well as retrofitting some technologies to be able to work in outer space.

This is one of the first telescopes with mirrors designed by small carbon nanotubes.

The image quality will not be as high resolution as the picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope or ground-based telescopes. However, it will be "a great and fast exploration tool, which will lead to bigger projects".