![]() ![]() took the ideas of the astronomy community that had been working for hundreds of years with preexisting telescope technology, which loses its effectiveness through the atmosphere, and instead envisioned using this idea of adaptive optics, and developed Starfire,” Cantu said.Ĭantu explained that the advances made in the last 30 years are exponential compared to the telescopes used for the last 400 years since Galileo. Kathryn Cantu, division chief, Space Electro Optics division, described Fugate as the "father of adaptive optics." This relationship led to the AFRL-funded revolutionary polishing technique called stressed lap polishing, a solution to the fundamental problem of shape misfit that occurs for large polishing tools on highly aspheric optical surfaces in the 3.5-meter primary mirror developed by 1992.Ĭol. “Taking risks is essential for breakthroughs in research and development,” he said. ![]() Not knowing what to expect, Fugate was pleasantly surprised when he developed a lasting friendship with Angel. “I was a bit apprehensive because I didn’t know how a member of the military would be received,” Fugate said. Roger Angel at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory on Angel’s inventions to spin-cast to an audience of students and staff in Tucson on the University of Arizona campus during his quest to get a telescope even larger than the first 1.5-meter telescope installed in May 1987. Yes, it was really here, after a decade of planning, fighting for and justifying budget, design reviews, taking huge risks on the primary mirror and a gamble that a 100-ton mount could track satellites.”įugate said he recalled working with Dr. “I wanted to be sure the events of the preceding day weren’t a dream. “The morning after the day we installed the telescope in October 1993, I went up the hill, climbed the stairs into the dome and just looked at the telescope,” Fugate said. Since that date and over the past three decades, the telescope has accelerated revolutionary developments in space awareness and imaging technologies featuring laser guide star, or LGS, adaptive optics, or AO, as an essential component for numerous space experiments.įugate, then working under AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate’s SOR, recounted his experience developing Starfire. In the fall of 1993, a 4,500-pound monolithic spun-cast borosilicate mirror had its telescope mount and mirror installed, capturing the inaugural image of a space object Feb. The telescope is the second largest in the DOD behind its sister 3.67-meter telescope at the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site, or AMOS, and would go on to prove a capability that would have huge impacts around the world. Fugate, who worked for AFRL for over 40 years and whom the scientific community has coined “the father of adaptive optics and modern astronomy,” was integral in the development and installation of the telescope 30 years ago. Retired AFRL senior scientist, astronomer, physicist and senior executive Dr. 10, 2024, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the “First Light” images captured by the 3.5-meter telescope at the Starfire Optical Range, or SOR, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. (AFRL) - The Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, marked a milestone in space exploration Feb. ![]()
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