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NASA's Next Telescope

By Brittany Sauser

The mirror segments will have seven degrees of freedom: scientists will be able to tip, tilt, and focus them separately without compromising their ability to act as a single optical device. The software that controls the segments was developed by NASA and Ball Aerospace. To validate its performance, Ball engineers have built a one-sixth-scale optical test bed (left). The mirrors in the test bed are a small-scale version of the real thing.