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By NASA
7 min read
A New Alloy is Enabling Ultra-Stable Structures Needed for Exoplanet Discovery
A unique new material that shrinks when it is heated and expands when it is cooled could help enable the ultra-stable space telescopes that future NASA missions require to search for habitable worlds.
Advancements in material technologies are needed to meet the science needs of the next great observatories. These observatories will strive to find, identify, and study exoplanets and their ability to support life. Credit: NASA JPL One of the goals of NASA’s Astrophysics Division is to determine whether we are alone in the universe. NASA’s astrophysics missions seek to answer this question by identifying planets beyond our solar system (exoplanets) that could support life. Over the last two decades, scientists have developed ways to detect atmospheres on exoplanets by closely observing stars through advanced telescopes. As light passes through a planet’s atmosphere or is reflected or emitted from a planet’s surface, telescopes can measure the intensity and spectra (i.e., “color”) of the light, and can detect various shifts in the light caused by gases in the planetary atmosphere. By analyzing these patterns, scientists can determine the types of gasses in the exoplanet’s atmosphere.
Decoding these shifts is no easy task because the exoplanets appear very near their host stars when we observe them, and the starlight is one billion times brighter than the light from an Earth-size exoplanet. To successfully detect habitable exoplanets, NASA’s future Habitable Worlds Observatory will need a contrast ratio of one to one billion (1:1,000,000,000).
Achieving this extreme contrast ratio will require a telescope that is 1,000 times more stable than state-of-the-art space-based observatories like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and its forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. New sensors, system architectures, and materials must be integrated and work in concert for future mission success. A team from the company ALLVAR is collaborating with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to demonstrate how integration of a new material with unique negative thermal expansion characteristics can help enable ultra-stable telescope structures.
Material stability has always been a limiting factor for observing celestial phenomena. For decades, scientists and engineers have been working to overcome challenges such as micro-creep, thermal expansion, and moisture expansion that detrimentally affect telescope stability. The materials currently used for telescope mirrors and struts have drastically improved the dimensional stability of the great observatories like Webb and Roman, but as indicated in the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, they still fall short of the 10 picometer level stability over several hours that will be required for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. For perspective, 10 picometers is roughly 1/10th the diameter of an atom.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope sits atop the support structure and instrument payloads. The long black struts holding the telescope’s secondary mirror will contribute roughly 30% of the wave front error while the larger support structure underneath the primary mirror will contribute another 30%.
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Funding from NASA and other sources has enabled this material to transition from the laboratory to the commercial scale. ALLVAR received NASA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) funding to scale and integrate a new alloy material into telescope structure demonstrations for potential use on future NASA missions like the Habitable Worlds Observatory. This alloy shrinks when heated and expands when cooled—a property known as negative thermal expansion (NTE). For example, ALLVAR Alloy 30 exhibits a -30 ppm/°C coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) at room temperature. This means that a 1-meter long piece of this NTE alloy will shrink 0.003 mm for every 1 °C increase in temperature. For comparison, aluminum expands at +23 ppm/°C.
While other materials expand while heated and contract when cooled, ALLVAR Alloy 30 exhibits a negative thermal expansion, which can compensate for the thermal expansion mismatch of other materials. The thermal strain versus temperature is shown for 6061 Aluminum, A286 Stainless Steel, Titanium 6Al-4V, Invar 36, and ALLVAR Alloy 30.
Because it shrinks when other materials expand, ALLVAR Alloy 30 can be used to strategically compensate for the expansion and contraction of other materials. The alloy’s unique NTE property and lack of moisture expansion could enable optic designers to address the stability needs of future telescope structures. Calculations have indicated that integrating ALLVAR Alloy 30 into certain telescope designs could improve thermal stability up to 200 times compared to only using traditional materials like aluminum, titanium, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs), and the nickel–iron alloy, Invar.
The hexapod assembly with six ALLVAR Alloy struts was measured for long-term stability. The stability of the individual struts and the hexapod assembly were measured using interferometry at the University of Florida’s Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics. The struts were found to have a length noise well below the proposed target for the success criteria for the project. Credit: (left) ALLVAR and (right) Simon F. Barke, Ph.D. To demonstrate that negative thermal expansion alloys can enable ultra-stable structures, the ALLVAR team developed a hexapod structure to separate two mirrors made of a commercially available glass ceramic material with ultra-low thermal expansion properties. Invar was bonded to the mirrors and flexures made of Ti6Al4V—a titanium alloy commonly used in aerospace applications—were attached to the Invar. To compensate for the positive CTEs of the Invar and Ti6Al4V components, an NTE ALLVAR Alloy 30 tube was used between the Ti6Al4V flexures to create the struts separating the two mirrors. The natural positive thermal expansion of the Invar and Ti6Al4V components is offset by the negative thermal expansion of the NTE alloy struts, resulting in a structure with an effective zero thermal expansion.
The stability of the structure was evaluated at the University of Florida Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics. The hexapod structure exhibited stability well below the 100 pm/√Hz target and achieved 11 pm/√Hz. This first iteration is close to the 10 pm stability required for the future Habitable Worlds Observatory. A paper and presentation made at the August 2021 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers conference provides details about this analysis.
Furthermore, a series of tests run by NASA Marshall showed that the ultra-stable struts were able to achieve a near-zero thermal expansion that matched the mirrors in the above analysis. This result translates into less than a 5 nm root mean square (rms) change in the mirror’s shape across a 28K temperature change.
The ALLVAR enabled Ultra-Stable Hexapod Assembly undergoing Interferometric Testing between 293K and 265K (right). On the left, the Root Mean Square (RMS) changes in the mirror’s surface shape are visually represented. The three roughly circular red areas are caused by the thermal expansion mismatch of the invar bonding pads with the ZERODUR mirror, while the blue and green sections show little to no changes caused by thermal expansion. The surface diagram shows a less than 5 nanometer RMS change in mirror figure. Credit: NASA’s X-Ray and Cryogenic Facility [XRCF] Beyond ultra-stable structures, the NTE alloy technology has enabled enhanced passive thermal switch performance and has been used to remove the detrimental effects of temperature changes on bolted joints and infrared optics. These applications could impact technologies used in other NASA missions. For example, these new alloys have been integrated into the cryogenic sub-assembly of Roman’s coronagraph technology demonstration. The addition of NTE washers enabled the use of pyrolytic graphite thermal straps for more efficient heat transfer. ALLVAR Alloy 30 is also being used in a high-performance passive thermal switch incorporated into the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory’s Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE Night) project aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 2, which will be delivered to the Moon through NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. The NTE alloys enabled smaller thermal switch size and greater on-off heat conduction ratios for LuSEE Night.
Through another recent NASA SBIR effort, the ALLVAR team worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop detailed datasets of ALLVAR Alloy 30 material properties. These large datasets include statistically significant material properties such as strength, elastic modulus, fatigue, and thermal conductivity. The team also collected information about less common properties like micro-creep and micro-yield. With these properties characterized, ALLVAR Alloy 30 has cleared a major hurdle towards space-material qualification.
As a spinoff of this NASA-funded work, the team is developing a new alloy with tunable thermal expansion properties that can match other materials or even achieve zero CTE. Thermal expansion mismatch causes dimensional stability and force-load issues that can impact fields such as nuclear engineering, quantum computing, aerospace and defense, optics, fundamental physics, and medical imaging. The potential uses for this new material will likely extend far beyond astronomy. For example, ALLVAR developed washers and spacers, are now commercially available to maintain consistent preloads across extreme temperature ranges in both space and terrestrial environments. These washers and spacers excel at counteracting the thermal expansion and contraction of other materials, ensuring stability for demanding applications.
For additional details, see the entry for this project on NASA TechPort.
Project Lead: Dr. James A. Monroe, ALLVAR
The following NASA organizations sponsored this effort: NASA Astrophysics Division, NASA SBIR Program funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).
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Last Updated Jul 01, 2025 Related Terms
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ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this image reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.
What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its center, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of our Sun grows. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show.
Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves, and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light. Despite this, UGC 11397’s actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission — high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a donut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.
Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbor a supermassive black hole that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the universe’s history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very center of a galaxy.
Text credit: ESA
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
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By NASA
Astrophysics Science Video Producer – Goddard Space Flight Center
Growing up in Detroit with a camera in her hand, Sophia Roberts — now an award-winning astrophysics science video producer—never imagined that one day her path would wind through clean rooms, vacuum chambers, and even a beryllium mine. But framing the final frontier sometimes requires traveling through some of Earth’s less-explored corners.
Sophia Roberts is an astrophysics Science video producer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She films space hardware assembly and explains complicated topics, weaving science and art together.Credit: Courtesy of Sophia Roberts Sophia received her first camera from her father, a photography enthusiast, when she was just five or six years old. “I’ve basically been snapping away ever since!” she says.
With a natural curiosity and enthusiasm for science, Sophia pursued a degree in biology at Oberlin College in Ohio. There, she discovered that she could blend her two passions.
“I often lingered in lab sessions, not to finish an experiment but to photograph it,” Sophia says. “I had an epiphany at the beginning of class one day, which always opened with clips from BBC nature documentaries. I decided right then that I would be one of the people who make those videos one day.”
Part of Sophia’s role currently involves documenting NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is taking shape and being tested at NASA Goddard. She captured a cosmic selfie while photographing the telescope’s primary mirror, which was designed and built by L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York, before it was integrated with other components.Credit: NASA/Sophia Roberts She initially thought that meant wildlife filmmaking—perched in a blind on a mountainside, waiting hours for an animal to appear. That dream led her to Montana State University, where she learned to blend scientific rigor with visual storytelling through their science and natural history filmmaking master’s program.
While completing her degree, Sophia worked as a traveling presenter for the Montana Space Grant Consortium. “I was mainly giving presentations about NASA missions and showing kids beautiful images of space,” she says. “That was my first true introduction to NASA. I loved being able to watch the children’s eyes light up when they saw what’s out there in space.”
Sophia then completed an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History while completing her thesis. Once she graduated, she landed a year-long fellowship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as an Earth science news fellow. In this role, she focused on packaging up stories through satellite imagery and explanations.
Sophia holds a Webby award she, Mike McClare (left), and Michael Starobin (right) won for their broadcasts of the James Webb Space Telescope’s launch, deployment, and first images.Credit: James Hartley She leaned into her videography skills in her next role, as part of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope team.
“Webb is one of my great loves in life,” she says. “I learned to negotiate with engineers for the perfect shot, navigate NASA’s protocols, and work with mission partners. I only spent five years on Webb, but it feels like it was half my life. Still—it was everything.”
That mission took her to some unforgettable places, like a mine in Delta, Utah, where raw material for Webb’s mirrors was unearthed. “It was this giant, spiral pit where they were mining beryllium at just 0.02% concentration,” Sophia says. The process was as otherworldly as the location.
In 2021, Sophia traveled to Delta, Utah to capture behind-the-scenes footage of raw material for the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirrors being unearthed. In this gif, a drone captures an aerial view of the site.Credit: Scott Rogers She also documented thermal vacuum testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in a giant pill-shaped chamber with a 40-foot round door. “I had to take confined space training to crawl around in the area underneath the chamber,” she says. “It felt like spelunking.”
Once Webb launched, Sophia pivoted to covering many of NASA’s smaller astrophysics missions along with the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. These days, she can often be found gowned up in a “bunny suit” in the largest clean room at Goddard to document space telescope assembly, or in a studio recording science explanations.
Sophia stands in the largest clean room at Goddard, where she documents space hardware coming together. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn “I love capturing the visual stories and helping fill in the gaps to help people understand NASA research,” Sophia says. “I try to focus on the things that will get people excited about the science so they’ll stop scrolling to find out more.”
For Sophia, the process is often as exhilarating as the result. “I love venturing out to remote places where science is being done,” she says. “I’d love to film a balloon launch in Antarctica someday!”
Jacob Pinter (left), host of NASA’s Curious Universe Podcast, leads a discussion with Sophia Roberts (center), a NASA video producer who documented the Webb project, and Paul Geithner (right), former deputy project manager for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, following a screening of the new NASA+ documentary “Cosmic Dawn: The Untold Story of the James Webb Space Telescope,” Wednesday, June 11, 2025, at the Greenbelt Cinema in Greenbelt, Md. Featuring never-before-seen footage, Cosmic Dawn offers an unprecedented glimpse into Webb’s assembly, testing, and launch. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky To others who dream of pursuing a similar career, Sophia recommends diving in headfirst. “With cameras readily available and free online platforms, it’s never been easier to get into the media,” she says. “You just have to be careful to research your topic and sources, making sure you really know what you’re sharing and understand that science is always evolving as we learn more.” And Sophia emphasizes how important storytelling is for conveying information, especially when it’s as complex as astrophysics. “Studying science is wonderful, but I also think helping people visualize it is magical.”
By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jun 27, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:04:13 Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA head of Space and Robotic Exploration, explains that Ignis mission will include an ambitious technological and scientific programme with several experiments led by ESA and proposed by the Polish space industry.
On 26 June 2025, ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Poland and his crewmates arrived to the International Space Station on the Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4).
The Polish project astronaut is the second of a new generation of European astronauts to fly on a commercial human spaceflight opportunity with Axiom Space.
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By NASA
2 min read
Hubble Captures an Active Galactic Center
This Hubble image shows the spiral galaxy UGC 11397. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this image reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.
What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its center, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of our Sun grows. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show.
Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves, and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light. Despite this, UGC 11397’s actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission — high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a donut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.
Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbor a supermassive black hole that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the universe’s history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very center of a galaxy.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Jun 27, 2025 Related Terms
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