This proposal for the 2014 Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship in Astrophysics aims to develop new broadband enhanced lithium fluoride protected aluminum mirror coatings with ~90% reflectivity from the far ultraviolet to the near infrared. We describe the technical and scientific justification for this work, and lay out a four-year development effort plan to raise the Technology Readiness Level of these new coatings to TRL 6, thus qualifying them for future space missions. The end product will be a fully assembled and environmentally tested telescope with new, broadband reflective coatings that can be integrated into a suborbital payload for science operations. This proposal will satisfy a priority 1 technology goal of the Cosmic Origins program, and enable a wider bandpass for the next large UV-Optical-IR observatory. This effort fulfills the goals of the RTF program by giving an early career researcher the opportunity to develop a technology with the potential to enable major scientific breakthroughs, and thus develop the skills to become a PI of a future astrophysics mission.
More »Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
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Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) | Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Greenbelt, Maryland |
University of Colorado Boulder | Supporting Organization | Academia | Boulder, Colorado |