If successful, this liquid lens telescope will be 100 times more powerful than James Webb.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — The world now has a telescope James Webb in space. The telescope will investigate how the universe was born.
Now, the American Space Agency (NASA) is investigating the prospect of using liquid lenses to build telescopes 100 times larger than Webb’s. NASA wrote in a new article on its website that they are looking for new methods and liquid materials to build large telescopes.
“Larger telescopes collect more light and allow astronomers to peer further into space and see objects in much greater detail.”
“What if there was a way to make a telescope 10 times or even 100 times bigger than before? What started as a theoretical question is now a series of experiments to see if liquids can be used to make lenses in microgravity,” NASA wrote.
Experiments Making Liquid Lenses in Space
The experiment is currently being kept at the ISS US National Lab in the United States Orbital Segment (USOS) of the International Space Station (ISS) while awaiting the arrival of astronauts on Axiom Mission 1, a private crewed mission that will take four people to the ISS for an eight-day stay.
The tests will be conducted as part of Eytan Stibbe’s research portfolio as an Israeli private astronaut and Mission 2 Specialist on the crew.
In Earth’s gravity, liquids are less useful as optical lenses, but in microgravity, they are very good at focusing light.
“All fluids have an elastic-like force that holds them together at their surface,” NASA said.
This force is called surface tension. That is what allows some insects to glide across the water without sinking and gives the shape of a water droplet. On Earth, when water droplets are small enough (2 mm or smaller), the surface tension overcomes gravity and they remain perfectly spherical. If the droplet grows much larger, it will squeeze under its own weight. However, in space, clumps of water and other liquids (after wobbling) eventually become perfectly spherical.
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