Media Lario completes the telescope assembly for the NASA JPL ASTHROS mission

Media Lario S.r.l. has completed the build of the 2.5 meter telescope for the ASTHROS mission of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The mission will use a balloon the size of a football stadium to send the telescope above the stratosphere over Antarctica to study star formation.

The optical system of the telescope is comprised of gold-coated panels which form the primary mirror, precisely aligned on a carbon fibre support structure which is lightweight yet strong enough to maintain the mirror’s precise shape during flight. The mirror has been produced using Media Lario’s patented Repli-formed Optics™ technology and is similar to the mirrors produced for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), located in the Atacama Desert of Chile.