Lighter mirrors are key to tremendous savings in telescope mass and overall project cost.
The desire for lightweight mirrors for aerospace applications has been steadily on the rise over the last few years. This is why aerospace programs have been willing to pay for exotic and very expensive materials such as beryllium and silicon carbide. With the advent of all-composite replica mirrors, optical designers now have an alternate choice for telescope mirrors which are much lighter, cheaper, faster to produce, and easily made in multiple units. Space qualified materials, such as Bryte's EX-1515 cyanate ester materials, make space flight qualified composite mirrors possible. Many new applications are now becoming feasible as a result of composite mirror technology.