Saturday, May 3, 2008

Space-Based Fresnel Telescopes

Here's a proposal for a very light, very large space telescope with a Fresnel imager. We're talking possibly a 30-meter objective Fresnel plate with a focus spacecraft flying in tandem several kilometers away. Great angular resolution, very high contrast; in other words, it would be a terrific terrestrial planet finder. But two spacecraft working in tandem would obviously be a big problem.

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