B -- Subscale Prototyping and Conceptual Design Studies of Deformable Secondary Mirrors for Future Giant Telescopes

The New Initiatives Office of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. ("AURA") is interested in meeting with vendors in late February, 2004 for informal discussions in regarding the technical issues and options for developing deformable secondary mirrors for future giant telescopes. These discussions will help to determine the feasibility, and the define the requirements of two Request's for Proposals (RFP's) tentatively scheduled to be released in mid-2004: (1) The first RFP will seek qualified vendors and research institutions to develop a conceptual design for a complete deformable secondary mirror system with a 2-3 meter clear aperture diameter for a 30-meter class giant telescope. (2) The second RFP will seek qualified vendors to design, fabricate, and test a 1-meter class subscale prototype mirror facesheet, using materials, fabrication technologies, and test methods that are scalable to aperture diameters of 2-3 meters. Both RFPs are concerned with deformable secondary mirrors for use with adaptive optics (AO) in astronomy. Adaptive optics (AO) systems remove distortions caused by atmospheric turbulence by making corrections to the incoming wavefront using one or multiple light sources as references. Deformable secondary mirrors are an attractive option for introducing these corrections, since they minimize the number of optical surfaces in the AO system and thereby improve throughput and minimize emissivity. Depending on the application, telescope design, and site, our current estimates for the requirements of such a deformable mirror for a 30-meter class giant telescope include a 2-4 meter clear aperture diameter, a 2-dimensional array of actuators with 20 to 100 actuators across the diameter of the mirror, an actuator stoke of from 15 mm (with separate tip/tilt correction) to 60 mm (with tilt correction included), and mirror update rates of from 100 to 1000 Hz. AURA is interested in meeting with vendors to discuss the potential feasibility of these requirements, as well as the design options for face sheet thickness, face sheet material, segmented vs. continuous face sheets, actuator technology, actuator influence functions, optical test methods, and face sheet surface quality and roughness. The two RFPs will be administered by AURA through the New Initiatives Office in partnership with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project. Interested parties should contact Andy Commissaris (Tel: +1 (555) 000-0000; Fax: +1 (555) 000-0000; email: contact@example.gov) with their contact information and availability for a teleconference and/or a face-to-face meeting to be located in Tucson, Arizona during the last week of February and/or first week of March 2004. A list of topics for discussion and additional information on deformable secondary mirror requirements and their applications for future giant telescopes may be found at http://www.aura-nio.noao.edu. A list of topics for discussion may be found under the topic - What's New. The Contracting Office for this requirement is AURA-NOAO, 950 N. Cherry Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719. Please contact Andy Commissaris (Tel: +1 (555) 000-0000; Fax: +1 (555) 000-0000; email: contact@example.gov) regarding this notice.