New Space Telescopes Could Look Like Giant Beach Balls

Inflatable balloon reflectors could peer into deep space, scanning for signs of water, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional telescope.

CHRIS WALKER

https://www.wired.com/story/new-space-telescopes-could-look-like-giant-beach-balls/

IF WE EVER have giant inflatable telescopes in space, you can thank Chris Walker’s mom. Years ago, Walker was making 

chocolate pudding when he had to interrupt his culinary undertaking to field a phone call from his mother. He took the pudding off the stovetop, covered it with plastic wrap, and placed the pot on the floor by his couch. When the call was finished, he was startled to find an image of a lightbulb from a nearby lamp hovering over the end of the couch. When he investigated the cause of this apparition, he found that a pocket of cold air that formed as the pudding cooled had caused the center of the plastic wrap to sag toward the pudding. This had, in effect, formed a lens that was reflecting the lightbulb.

“I thought, ‘hey, this is cool, but I have no use for it now,’” Walker, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, says. But 30 years later, he used it as the basis for a proposal he sent to NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, a program that funds far-out aerospace ideas.

The subject of that proposal was essentially a way to turn a giant inflatable beach ball into a space telescope. This suborbital balloon reflector wouldn’t contend with as much atmospheric interference as ground-based telescopes. Furthermore, it could be easily scaled up, thereby opening vasts swaths of the universe to observation without the hefty price tag associated with building large, solid telescopes.

The idea for the large balloon reflector grew out of Walker’s 

work on the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory, a one-meter telescope attached to a high-altitude balloon that circled Antarctica in the upper atmosphere for several weeks in 2012. As Walker watched the balloon inflate with 35 million cubic feet of helium, it occurred to him that the balloon was a lot of wasted space for such a small telescope. Wouldn’t it be nice if the balloon itself could be used as an observatory? This observation, combined with the insight from the pudding incident decades prior, led to the creation of the first inflatable telescope.

In 2014, Walker and his students made the first prototype of the large balloon reflector out of a large inflatable plastic sphere sold by a Chinese toy manufacturer. The ball had been designed for people to climb around inside like a human-sized “gerbil ball,” but it also turned out to be pretty great for radio astronomy. Walker suspended an antenna inside the ball and sprayed a circle with metallic paint on the inside to create a reflector. With this rudimentary setup, Walker and his students were able to do radio observations of the sun from the rooftop of the astronomy building at the University of Arizona. Even though it wasn’t sent to the upper atmosphere, Walker says it demonstrates that even a very crude version of the telescope could get good results. “I knew it would work, but you have to show people,” he says. “Nothing beats a rooftop demonstration.”

CHRIS WALKER

But Walker realized the real benefits of a spherical, inflatable telescope would be found in space. Traditional radio telescopes use parabolic dishes as reflectors, which gather radiation and focus it on a specific point. While this works well enough, astronomers have to move the entire dish to point it a specific spot, which becomes a burden when the telescope is in space. With Walker’s design, you can point the telescope by moving the antenna inside the sphere, rather than repositioning the entire telescope. A spherical telescope also has a large field of view, so it can image large portions of the universe without moving.

Walker’s inflatable telescope is not the first time NASA has flirted with beach balls in space. In the early 1960s, NASA launched Echo 1 and Echo 2, which were massive inflatable reflectors that could passively bounce radio signals around the world. But no one ever applied the concept to deep space observation. (Although in 1996, NASA did an experiment 

with an inflatable parabolic reflector in space.) After proving that the large balloon reflector worked as intended, Walker received a Phase 2 NIAC grant to design a space-based version of the inflatable telescope.

The result is the Terahertz Space Telescope, an inflatable ball 40 meters in diameter with a steerable antenna inside. Because gas pressure in space is so low, Walker says you could inflate the massive telescope using less gas—likely nitrogen or neon due to their low freezing temperatures—than you’d need to inflate a party balloon on Earth. Obviously space debris and micrometeoroids are a concern for inflatable objects in orbit, but Walker says if one were to hit the balloon, the slow diffusion of gas in the telescope means that it would still take years before the telescope deflated.

The effective diameter of the Terahertz Space Telescope, Walker says, would be about 25 meters. To put this in perspective, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in 2021 and will be the most sensitive telescope ever sent to space, has an aperture of about 6.5 meters. The price difference is even more dramatic: Walker estimates the inflatable telescope would cost about a $200 million to send to orbit, whereas the James Webb telescope is expected to cost about $10 billion by the time it’s launched.

But Walker's telescope still needs to get built. If it can overcome that hurdle, the Terahertz Space Telescope could observe the universe using wavelengths that would allow it to detect the presence of water in deep space. It could help locate water-rich asteroids within our solar system, or help detect water in the habitable zones of other solar systems. Walker is particularly excited about the prospect of detecting gaseous water near the stars in protoplanetary systems, which he says could tell us a great deal about how Earth came to be covered in water.

For now, though, the Terahertz Space Telescope has only undergone two small experimental tests. Both tests were conducted under the auspices of Freefall Aerospace, a company Walker co-founded as a spinoff of his work on inflatable telescopes. Freefall aims to use inflatable satellites similar in design to this telescope to beam 5G to Earth. Last year, a prototype of one of these inflatable satellites hitched a ride to the stratosphere on a NASA high altitude balloon, and demonstrated its antenna-steering technology flawlessly. Shortly thereafter, Walker began working on a design to create a constellation of inflatable satellites and got two prototypes to “talk” to one another on the ground.

Next, Walker expects to deploy an inflatable 5G satellite in orbit attached to a cubesat. He is also working on two NASA proposals to send the large balloon reflector to the stratosphere and the Terahertz Space Telescope to orbit. Recently, Walker and his colleagues even pitched NASA on a space-based array made out of these inflatable telescopes, which would allow them to image the surface of exoplanets around Alpha Centauri, our closest stellar neighbor. Yet as with all things in space science, securing the funding for the mission will be almost as difficult as developing the technology. But with any luck, we may be hunting for habitable exoplanets using giant inflatable telescopes in the not-so-near future.

NASA chooses Dutch terahertz detectors

Out of 32 proposals, NASA decided on the GUSTO mission as the project of choice to launch in December 2021. The terahertz sensors aboard the balloon-launched mission will be made in the Netherlands.

http://delta.tudelft.nl/artikel/nasa-chooses-dutch-terahertz-detectors/32957

NASA wants to untangle the complexities of the dust in between stars, as photographed here by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dr. Jian Rong Gao was excited by the NASA press release last Friday. It says that the Gusto mission was selected as the mission to be built in the next few years.

'NASA has determined that Gusto (Galactic/extragalactic ULDB spectroscopic terahertz observatory) has the best potential for excellent science return with a feasible development plan,' says the press release.

The terahertz sensors on the mission will be made at Gao's lab at the section quantum nanoscience from the TU Delft Faculty of Applied Sciences (TNW) in collaboration with the Dutch organisation for space research SRON.

The sensors have been tried and tested in the STO2 mission (Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory) that was launched shortly before Christmas last year. The sensors are tuned to 1.4, 1.9 and 4.7 THz respectively to observe the presence of nitrogen, carbon and oxygen.

The 2021 mission will feature three eight-pixel cameras and other equipment necessary for the ultra-sensitive detection of terahertz radiation from the cosmic material between the stars. Dr. Christopher Walker of the University of Arizona will be the principal investigator on the project.

NASA says it has selected a science mission that will measure emissions from the interstellar medium. This data will help scientists determine the life cycle of interstellar gas in our Milky Way galaxy, witness the formation and destruction of star-forming clouds, and understand the dynamics and gas flow in the vicinity of the centre of our galaxy.

STO2 landed and data secured

The STO2 first light spectrum at 1.9 THz. Credit: Delft University of Technology

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-sto2.html

The STO2 telescope with Dutch detectors on board that circled around the South Pole in December 2016 to investigate gas clouds between the stars landed safely on 30 December.

At an altitude of 39 kilometers the NASA telescope circled along with the polar vortex for a period of three weeks. During that time STO2 picked up as much radiation as possible at the frequencies of 1.4 and 1.9 THz to find ionized nitrogen (NII) and ionized carbon respectively (CII) in a part of our Milky Way. These substances indicate the process of star formation from dust and gas.

Measuring oxygen

The 4.7 THz detector that would measure neutral atomic oxygen (OI) also worked. However, something went wrong in the system for the local oscillator that had to generate the required reference signal of 4.7 THz. An electrical component needed for the communication between this local oscillator and ground control became overheated by the sun. OI reveals that a star is actually being born. This is an observation that astronomers are keen to obtain, especially if that observation is being done for the first time beyond the earth's atmosphere, as would have been possible with STO2.

STO2 project leader for SRON and TU Delft researcher Jian-Rong Gao and his team are indeed disappointed about the absence of the 4.7 THz observations but on the other hand they are extremely happy with the large quantity of data for the other two frequencies. After an initial hiccup in the orientation mechanism of the telescope, the collection of that data proceeded really well. "Once the rough data have been processed to reveal spectral lines for CII and NII then STO2 will have drastically expanded the area mapped so far for these substances."

Mission continues

STO2 was launched from Antarctica on 9 December 2016. The polar vortex also ensures that the balloon missions land again at a location that can be reached along the South Pole Traverse, a sort of Antarctic 'motorway' between the South Pole and McMurdo. When the cooling fluid for the superconducting detectors (liquid helium) had been used up and the data was safely downloaded to computers on earth, STO2 landed on the South Pole Transverse. The telescope was picked up on 10 January so that it could be brought back to McMurdo.

STO2 is an exploratory mission under the leadership of the University of Arizona for astronomy in these terahertz frequencies. On 24 January 2017, NASA will visit the University of Arizona to decide about GUSTO. This is also a balloon mission but with a longer duration (about 100 days) and with more effective instruments on board. For NII, CII and OI, GUSTO will have cameras with eight pixels that will once again be developed by SRON and Delft University of Technology.

The teams of professor Alexander Tielens (Leiden University) and professor Floris van der Tak (SRON/University of Groningen) will contribute to the scientific analysis of the observations.

Polar balloon STO2 to go the edge of space with Dutch instruments

Credit: Jian-Rong Gao
http://phys.org/news/2016-12-polar-balloon-sto2-edge-space.html

Stars and planets are born from clouds of molecules that coagulate and eventually fall apart again in the space between the stars in a galaxy. Astronomers still do not know exactly how this works.
That is why NASA's stratospheric balloon STO2 will be launched from Antarctica to the edge of space to measure cosmic far infrared radiation. At an altitude of 40 kilometers above Antarctica, the air is crystal clear. There is scarcely any water vapor, which often blocks this type of radiation at other locations in the atmosphere.

The NASA balloon that will carry the measuring instruments to this altitude will make use of the circular polar vortex, a stable airflow on which the balloon can circulate with for one or more rounds of about 14 days each.

This will allow scientists to carry out observations for a period of two weeks before they find the balloon at nearly the same location again. STO2 has been developed under the leadership of the University of Arizona and contains vital contributions from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research (Utrecht and Groningen) and tech university TUDelft. These are three receivers for 1.4, 1.9 and 4.7 terahertz respectively.

Spectra of radiation at these frequencies often disclose the presence of elements in space, including electrically neutral atomic oxygen. The localization of that last element in space, which can be achieved using the 4.7 terahertz receiver, is a long-cherished dream of astronomers. It is the first time a 4.7 terahertz receiver will be brought to the edge of space for an unrestricted view. Together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the partners developed a reference source for radiation at this frequency. Electrically neutral atomic oxygen reveals us places in the gas clouds between stars that are particularly warm.

Credit: Delft University of Technology

This is a good indicator for stars that only just formed. This way we can directly find the birthplaces of new stars. STO2 is therefore an important scouting mission for future terahertz missions using a satellite in space. Far infrared radiation is sometimes also referred to as terahertz radiation. One terahertz is equivalent to a wavelength of 300 micrometers. The University of Arizona is scientifically in the lead of the mission. The teams of prof. dr. Alexander Tielens (Universiteit Leiden) and prof. dr. Floris van der Tak (SRON/Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) will help in the international scientific analysis of the observations. Thursday the team on Antarctica gets three hours of good weather conditions. If this is too short, nice launching weather will follow in the following days.

Antarctic HEAT Telescope Studies The Stuff Between the Stars

http://spaceref.com/antarctica-1/antarctic-heat-telescope-studies-the-stuff-between-the-stars.html

In the middle of the high Antarctic plateau, more than 500 miles from the South Pole, a small telescope is meticulously studying the clear polar skies.

Image: Looking like the top of a small, blue mailbox, the covering surrounding the HEAT Telescope is designed to prevent snow from drifting on top of it. Next to it, the Australian-made yellow PLATO-R module is keeps power and communication flowing to the telescope.

It's located at Ridge A, one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Situated more than 13,000 feet above sea level, the site gets less precipitation than almost anywhere in the world. During the brief summer there, temperatures rarely rise above minus 30 Fahrenheit, while in winter they frequently drop down well past 100 below.

"It's cold and it has basically half the oxygen, half the atmospheric pressure, that you're used to at sea level," said Craig Kulesa, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. "It's a challenging environment for a lot of reasons."

However, harsh conditions make it one of the best places on Earth to study the cosmos. Four years ago, scientists set up the High Elevation Antarctic Terahertz (HEAT) telescope to take advantage of the spot's unique atmospheric conditions. The project is supported by the National Science Foundation, which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program. The scientific instrument was developed at the University of Arizona and the power and communications unit was contributed by Australia's University of New South Wales.

Kulesa is the principal investigator for the project. The table-sized, mailbox-shaped instrument is observing the interstellar medium, diffuse clouds of dust and gas that pervade throughout space. Kulesa and graduate student David Lesser endure sub-zero temperatures on annual maintenance trips because Ridge A is the only place on the planet to capture the faint signals emitted by these astronomical clouds.

"It's as close as you can get to going into space with your feet still on the ground," Kulesa said.

Though space is a vacuum, it's not completely empty. There are trace amounts of dust and gas throughout the cosmos in the space between stars.

Most of this material is made up of the remnants of extinct stars that have burned away. This dust and gas coalesces into vast clouds, which can drift together and eventually condense into a new generation of stars and planets.

"What we really want to understand is that full life cycle," Kulesa said. "No one has ever seen a cloud form. No one really understands what it takes to cook up one of these clouds. And yet, every star and planet, including our own Sun and Earth formed from them."

These clouds are made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, the two most abundant elements in the universe, but that's not what the telescope is looking at. Instead, it's looking at the light released by carbon mixed inside the clouds and particularly around their edges. Every kind of atom emits and absorbs light at a unique characteristic frequency, and the project's astronomers are tuned to carbon because it's the easiest to see.

Photo Credit: Craig Kulesa The HEAT Telescope unsheathed. Inside, three mirrors focus incoming Terahertz light onto a detector with a cryostat that operates at minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Hydrogen and helium don't like to emit in ways that are useful for us. So the idea is that we look for these bright tracers that indicate the presence of these otherwise hard to measure things," said David Lesser, a graduate student at the University of Arizona.

The signals the team is looking for are in the terahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum, long wavelengths of light that fall between the infrared and radio bands. They're essentially or 1000 times redder than the reddest red that the human eye can see.

"You can think of it as very very high frequency radio waves that are naturally generated by these clouds of dust and gas that you find all over the universe," Lesser said. "We're particularly interested in these closer ones in the Milky Way galaxy."

The telescope is located at Ridge A because moisture in the air makes it nearly impossible to observe these particular wavelengths of light from almost anywhere else on Earth.

Water vapor is opaque to light waves at terahertz frequencies. Astronomers measure how much moisture is suspended between Earth and space in millimeters of "precipitable water vapor" (PWV). It's essentially as if all the water vapor in the column of air overhead were converted into liquid, how deep that pool of water would be.

A humid day in Washington DC might have as much as 50 millimeters of PWV. On a really dry day, there might be as little as a millimeter of PWV above Chile's Atacama Desert or the top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea, each home to some of the world's most powerful telescopes. However this is still enough to completely blot out the Sun, making astronomy out of the question.

During the middle of winter at Ridge A, there can be as little as a twentieth of a millimeter of PWV.

"The best way to get dry, water-free air is just to refrigerate it. Air at minus 50 Celsius holds about one hundredth of the water vapor as air at 0 Celsius, at freezing," Kulesa said. "The air can be saturated the air can be holding all of the water it can possibly hold, and it is still drier than the best mid-latitude sites."

With so little water vapor in the air, signals that are normally blocked shine through.

"What is a difficult observation at a mid-latitudes site is easy for us, and an impossible observation for them becomes merely challenging for us," Kulesa said.

The cold, dry conditions that make the site ideal for astronomy also make working there a challenge. While Kulesa and Lesser were at the site during the peak of summer, the temperature hovered around minus 30 to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

"There's no other way to say it: working at Ridge A is hard. Really hard," Kulesa said. "The high altitude and extreme cold, combined with the work hazards we bring (heavy lifting, extremely cold fuel, high voltage, delicate parts) make even simple tasks difficult. If you don't know your physical and mental limitations, you will definitely discover them at Ridge A."

For Kulesa and Lesser, this most recent trip to the site was a particularly difficult. In past years, they'd only been out for up to four days with a team of half a dozen technicians and support staff. This season it was just the two of them and one mountaineer to run the camp.

"We ended up staying at Ridge A for eight days and seven nights. This was more time there than my other two trips combined," Lesser said. "You have to pace yourself more, you have to work sustainably."

Adding to the strain, the instrument itself needed more repairs and adjustments than in previous years. The project is designed so that the whole telescope assembly can be swapped out and replaced with a duplicate because working in in the field is so difficult. Even so, unexpected problems inevitably crop up during the team's servicing mission in the field. This year the team had to deal with a range of issues from a short-circuiting power supply to a failed voltage regulator with no replacement part.

"It seemed like an unwelcome surprise popped up at every corner, but we kept knocking down the challenges one at a time until eventually we had the system fully up and running," Kulesa said. "I don't think we could have done much better given circumstances."

All the work payed off and the telescope is up and running, taking measurements in the 1.5 TeraHertz range, about 1500 times higher than the operating frequency of a mobile phone. In addition the team returned with the stored data the telescope collected over the last year.

"Right now we are processing all of the 2015 data that we physically returned from Ridge A in January. So far it looks simply amazing," Kulesa said.

The telescope that's out there now is not only gathering valuable scientific data, it's also a proof of concept. The team is hoping that after a few successful seasons, they can expand the instrument's capabilities by installing multiple reproductions of it around the ridge. Through a technique called astronomical interferometry, many small telescopes can combine to become as powerful as a much larger telescope.

"[You] just make multiple versions of HEAT set it around on the ice," said Chris Walker, a scientist at the University of Arizona and co-principal investigator of the project. "Then you combine the signals that are collected from each of these little telescopes, and you can synthetically in the computer create a larger telescope by adding the light that's gathered by these little telescopes and fake out having a larger telescope."

They're already working on a proposal to build a small prototype of two or three telescopes around Ridge A. In addition, they're hoping to upgrade the receiver to make it even more sensitive.

"Every year we try to push what robotic systems can do," Kulesa said. "It's a fun thing doing what people say is impossible."

NSF-funded research in this story: Craig Kulesa, University of Arizona, Award No. 1410896 .

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Printing the Future of Engineering

Students in Hao Xin's lab perform measurements on a 3-D printed prototype of a Lüneburg lens. (Image: Hao Xin)

http://uanews.org/story/printing-the-future-of-engineering

By Daniel Stolte,

3-D printing is revolutionizing the ways engineers think about and make highly complicated devices, with applications ranging from wireless communication to air traffic control to earthquake-proof buildings.

Hao Xin opens the door to his lab and points to an object that looks like some kind of strange, synthetic sponge made by an alien race much more advanced than ours.

"This is a prototype of a Lüneburg lens that we made," Xin says.

Lüneburg lenses are sought-after devices that could greatly advance wireless communications, among other applications. (Image: Hao Xin)

A lens?

Never mind the fact that it's neither transparent nor made of glass, but of a porous yet weirdly symmetric-looking, plasticky substance of oddly unappealing, pale gray color. Move your eyes closer, and your mind gets lost in a dazzling array of a myriad of tiny branchlets connected to each other at right angles, forming a thicket that gets denser toward the center of the object.

"This lens is not made for light," Xin says, "but for electromagnetic waves in the terahertz range, which is between microwaves and radio waves."

Now things make a bit more sense. Unlike light visible to humans, which is pretty picky and travels only through air, water or transparent things (for the most part), terahertz waves pass through anything from synthetics to textiles to cardboard. Because many biomolecules, proteins, explosives or narcotics absorb terahertz radiation in telltale ways, waves of this range can be used to detect such substances in airport security lanes, for example. 

Hao Xin is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the UA's College of Engineering.

Xin, a professor in electrical and computer engineering who heads the Millimeter Wave Circuits and Antennas Laboratory at the University of Arizona's College of Engineering, is harnessing the possibilities of three-dimensional printing to create materials and structures that not too long ago would have been written off as science fiction.

"By using 3-D printing and new design approaches, we are able to come up with components such as antennas, wave guides, lenses and holographic devices that are better than existing technology and haven't been possible to make before," he says.

In one line of research, Hao Xin's team is developing 3-D printing solutions to the challenges of combining different materials, as in this coplanar waveguide, a device that is used to transmit microwave-frequency signals. (Image: Hao Xin)

As computers, communication devices and other IT applications get smaller and can do ever more amazing things, engineers have to overcome ever greater challenges in designing and building the components that make them work.

Some applications require the invention of new materials. Some require new ways of manufacturing. And some require both.

Xin's group is one of the first to adopt 3-D printing approaches to make so-called metamaterials, engineered materials with properties not found in nature. Unlike conventional materials such as metals or plastics, metamaterials consist of assemblies of elements made from conventional materials, usually in repeating patterns. Their special properties arise not so much from the properties of their ingredients, but from the shape, geometry and orientation of their subunits. They can be designed to affect electromagnetic waves, sound and even the shockwaves of an earthquake in ways that would be impossible to achieve with traditional materials.

"Traditionally, it has been very difficult to make those three-dimensional, periodic structures," Xin explains. "Oftentimes, someone produces a two-dimensional prototype of a three-dimensional object to demonstrate some desired property, but those aren't very practical, nor do they have all the properties they need in order to work for application in question."

This horn antenna (used to focus beams of terahertz radiation) made by a 3-D printer in Xin's lab is another example of fabricating sophisticated devices more simply and cost-effectively than conventional processes. (Image: Hao Xin)

Xin's team has successfully created highly complicated structures using 3-D printing, such as the Lüneburg lens, which has applications ranging from microwave antennas to radar calibration devices.

"A Lüneburg lens makes a fantastic antenna that can be used for wireless communication and radar installations," Xin says, "but traditionally it is built manually, which is not cost-effective, and you can't make it very precise. Now we can make it at much lower cost and more precise."

Xin's lab also uses 3-D printers to make a range of conventional things, such as regular antennas and integrated circuits. It is one of the first to apply the approach to metamaterials to build innovative electromagnetic applications, and it has support from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Research, Raytheon and even Google.

Earlier this year, the team made waves when it published the first successful attempt at designing what many consider the holy grail of metamaterials: a negative refraction metamaterial that not only bends electromagnetic waves (in this case, microwaves) backward but also does not diminish energy in the process. All previous designs suffered from the fact that the waves lost a large portion of their energy when passing through the material.

Xin's accomplishment could bring negative refraction metamaterials closer to applications aiming at manipulating electromagnetic radiation in new ways.

One of them is a so-called phased array, a sophisticated assembly of antennas capable of focusing and pointing a beam of electromagnetic radiation. Used in radar applications for a long time, such arrays form a vital part of the next generation of wireless communication such as the 5G network.

"Unlike rotating radar antennas that you see at airports, which are limited to rotating speeds based on mechanical parts, a phased array doesn't move and has no moving parts that can fail," Xin explains. "Plus, the antenna can scan as fast as microseconds and in any direction you want.

"But for traditional phased arrays, the manufacturing cost and the mechanical assembly are quite expensive, and sometimes problematic. So if we use a 3-D printer where we can print a vertically integrated phased array, it is cheaper and offers better performance in a smaller footprint."

Therein lies the main advantage of 3-D printing over traditional assembly, according to Xin: It becomes possible to build extremely complex and intricate structures consisting of different materials in three-dimensional space rather than by stacking two-dimensional components, each made from one material.

"Take the way we design electronic components, for example," Xin says. "Traditionally, everything is printed on a flat circuit board, and if you need vertical integration, you have to make another board, and another, and then you connect them together. That is a costly process."

On the other hand, 3-D printing allows putting one material with one property in one location, and a material with a different property in another location, Xin explains.

"It doesn't matter how complicated the structure you're building," he says. "You can even think more futuristically. Your smartphone is essentially a three-dimensional block made of metal, glass, semiconductors and plastics. 

Of course, today we can't yet do this, but if 3-D printing technology becomes sufficiently advanced, we may be able to print the whole cellphone at once."

Shining a lighthouse on Tucson's Optics Valley

A 1964 initiative to boost the number of optical scientists in the US has spawned hundreds of companies.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.5018
Alan G. Levine,

Robert Breault is 74 years old, a graduate of the University of Arizona (UA) College of Optical Sciences (OSC), and a successful entrepreneur. He estimates that his company, Breault Research Organization (BRO), a multimillion-dollar optical software and engineering services firm based in Tucson, was the first spin-off from the college in 1979.

“I started with $200, three kids, and a wife, and no experience in the field,” he recalls. “I have never worked for any other company in my life.”

Today BRO has 29 employees, many of whom have advanced degrees in optics and physics, and operates in 37 countries. It is divided into three divisions, which focus on optical software, engineering services, and optics training.

The company’s core technology is based on Breault’s own pioneering work in stray-light analysis and suppression, which is essentially unwanted light in an optical system, explains Kevin Garcia, chief technology officer of BRO. “Bob started off doing some high-profile projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope and was able to improve the performance of its signal-to-noise ratio by something like a factor of 100 000 to 1, a pretty significant achievement at the time.”

BRO makes the APEX add-on for SolidWorks, a widely used tool for computer-aided design. Among APEX's features is the ability to model arrays of identical optical elements. CREDIT: BRO

Breault could carry out such projects thanks to a software program he had developed to conduct and solve stray-light analysis. From that program, a consultancy and a company soon blossomed.

As BRO added employees, Breault and his team rolled out another software program, one based on ray tracing to simulate the propagation of light. Early clients, including government laboratories and agencies, appreciated how the software helped improve the optical performance of their systems. No commercially available software could do the same thing, notes Garcia. Sensing a business opportunity, BRO began licensing the software and providing training on its usage.

BRO’s optical software still serves as the core of its business. As more and more everyday devices have a need to reduce stray light, for example, such as in cell phone cameras, BRO’s software helps optical designers and engineers to develop and prototype their systems.

The engineering services division is also very busy. “Many times companies will come to us and optics is not their core competency,” says Garcia. BRO serves as an optical engineering consulting firm and helps client companies in the design, analysis, prototyping, and manufacturing of optical systems from start to finish and anywhere in between. Its projects have ranged from designing the optics for an electric motor scooter to upgrading the landing lighting systems on US Navy aircraft carriers.

Optics Valley

Breault’s entry into the ecosystem of entrepreneurship wasn’t a fluke. In fact, his success and innovative spirit mirrors the very DNA of the program from which he graduated. Optical Sciences at the UA has always been tied to business and enterprise. As a result, a vibrant optics industry sprung up in the region.

Indeed, Tucson, where the UA is located, was dubbed “Optics Valley” by an article in BusinessWeek in 1992—and with good reason. The small city’s optics and nanotechnology sectors account for hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of high-income jobs. According to Tom Koch, dean of OSC, there have been at least 32 first-generation spin-offs (by people affiliated with OSC, including faculty, students, and alumni) and at least 11 second-generation companies: spin-offs from the spin-offs.

“It’s a natural and valuable function of a university research enterprise to fan and fuel economic development and get our technology out there—not just have it be papers,” says Koch, who spent much of his career in private-sector R&D leadership positions with organizations such as Lucent Technologies before joining the college in 2012.

It is hard to count the total number of optics companies in the region. Whereas many firms engage in optics-related activities, such as optical design and assembly or laser and mirror manufacture, others may identify themselves as software companies but in fact serve the optics sector. The Arizona Optics Industry Association (AOIA), the trade association that serves the industry throughout the state, comprises more than 300 member companies and organizations involved in some aspect of optics or optical engineering.

But a January 2008 report, prepared for the AOIA by the UA Office of Economic and Policy Analysis, paints a slightly different picture. Using data aggregated from 92 self-identified optics and nanotechnology companies statewide, the report notes

• • The sector accounts for more than 25 000 employees, with an average of 25 people per firm.
• • Total revenue of those industries is just over $2.3 billion, with average revenue of over $45 million per firm.
• • Small- and medium-sized companies have a total revenue of approximately $80 million, with an average of $1.7 million per firm.
• • About 68% of the companies are in Pima County (where Tucson is located), and 28% are in Maricopa County (the Phoenix valley).
• • Many firms have been established for a long time, with 46% having been in operation more than 10 years.

The report estimated that from 1998 to 2008 the Arizona photonics sector grew by a factor of 10.

Recently, the college joined the National Photonics Initiative (NPI), a collaborative alliance among US industry, academia, and government that seeks to raise awareness of photonics and the impact of photonics on our everyday lives; increase cooperation and coordination to advance photonics-driven fields; and drive US funding and investment in areas of photonics critical to maintaining US economic competitiveness and national security.

An NPI press release notes that “Southern Arizona has a particular strength in precision optical components and lenses, one of the fastest growing segments of the industry at 16 percent per year, and Arizona’s employment in this sector has more than doubled in the new millennium while other regions of the country have remained constant or seen sharp declines. Other areas of strength or opportunity in Arizona include photovoltaics, optical communications and biomedical imaging and instrumentation.”

Let there be light

How did optics get its start in Tucson? Formerly known as the Optical Sciences Center, the OSC was launched in 1964 by astronomer and head of the UA Steward Observatory, Aden Meinel. The center’s original directive was to combat the dearth of trained optical scientists in the US, which in the 1960s was viewed as a national crisis.

To meet that directive, Meinel collaborated with the US Air Force Institute of Technology and the Optical Society of America to write a proposal for the center. Financed by a joint lease-purchase agreement between the UA Foundation and the air force, the partnership provided $5.25 million in research funding and building mortgage payments over a five-year period. Meinel became its first director.

It’s no coincidence that an astronomer helped birth the center. Optics and astronomy have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship in Southern Arizona, as optical innovations have been spearheaded and companies have launched to meet the needs of the astronomy community. “The precursor to optics in general is the astronomy community, and they are wonderful people in love with their physics,” says Breault. “They are first and foremost the innovators and early adopters of technology,” which ranges from advanced CCD cameras to massive mirrors used in the world’s most powerful telescopes. “Astronomers are the forecasters of where the optics industry is going to be pushing,” he adds.

The west wing of the Meinel Optical Sciences Building was designed by the Phoenix, Arizona, firm of richärd+bauer. The wing opened in 2006. CREDIT: University of Arizona

OSC itself has been intimately involved in numerous astronomical and planetary science projects, and Koch is hoping to capitalize on this connection and push it even further. “When I got here, I realized there is a culture of making stuff, not just doing experiments and proof of concept,” he notes.

Koch helped merge two teams of engineers and scientists—which have worked side by side on multinational projects, such as telescope mirrors and cameras for various extraterrestrial missions—into one group called Engineering and Technical Services. This new endeavor, which spans OSC and the College of Science, consists of 120 professionals whose expertise includes metrology, measurement, software, electronic control systems, and optoelectronics.

Koch envisions the team’s interests to expand into biomedical and other arenas where optical science problem solving prevails. His college has purchased and upgraded critical tools, such as a diamond turning tool, which “allows [us] to get into micro-optics and airborne optics which could be applied to projects for the military or medical fields,” he says. “One of my goals is to become known as an enterprise that can do real large scale problems, complex system level projects, and be a national go-to partner” for prototype development and other services for outside corporations and research groups. “We have the confidence, people, and tools.”

The UA itself has a strong entrepreneurial contingency, which is aligned across campus. Resources and experts are readily available to assist professors in commercializing their technology. “Optical Sciences has a legacy and continuing track record of being one of the leaders at the university in intellectual property generation,” says Koch. “We put our money where our mouth is.”

In fact, OSC pays part of the salary of a technology-transfer associate who spends half her time at the college assessing licensing deals for optics faculty and students, and helping them navigate intellectual property rules concerning the launching of a company that uses technology generated by the university.

Jim Wyant, who served as director of OSC from 1999 to 2005 and as founding dean (when it transitioned to college status) from 2005 to 2012, is one of Arizona’s most successful optics entrepreneurs. The founder of multiple companies, he currently serves as chairman of 4D Technology, which he helped launch in 2002.

The company designs and manufactures laser interferometers, surface roughness profilers, and interferometry accessories for applications in aerospace, astronomy, and optical fabrication, as well as for semiconductors and data storage. “The UA has done everything it can to help me,” he states, noting that when he founded his first company, WYKO, he was allowed to keep his tenure while spending only 20% of his time at the institution.

UA’s OSC alumni have remained loyal to the university and to the scholarship of optics. Wyant estimates that 25–30% of alumni remain in Arizona. Local firms continue to hire graduates. According to US Representative Ron Barber (D-AZ) in Inside Tucson Business, the college educates more students in optics than any other institution in the US. Given that fact, there is every reason to believe that the college will not stray from its lighted entrepreneurial path.

Alaina G. Levine is a science and engineering writer, career consultant, and professional speaker and comedian. Networking for Nerds, her new book on networking strategies for scientists and engineers, will be published by Wiley later this year. She can be reached through her website or on Twitter at @AlainaGLevine.