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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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By USH
Since November 2024, strange blinking lights have been reported worldwide, an unexplained phenomenon that’s left many puzzled. MrMBB333 believes he may have found a connection.
Also known as electrical pollution, dirty electricity refers to high-frequency voltage spikes that ride along standard power lines. These rogue signals, forms of electromagnetic interference (EMI), can spread through our infrastructure, causing devices to glitch or behave unpredictably.
If this interference is appearing globally, the source might be something massive, possibly deep within Earth’s core. Rogue frequencies from the core could travel up and interact with power grids, solar systems, and transmission lines, triggering widespread anomalies.
Supporting this idea is a discovery from NASA’s ANITA project in Antarctica. While searching for cosmic neutrinos, scientists instead detected impossible radio signals rising from deep within Earth, signals that defy current physics.
According to current science, these waves should have been absorbed by the Earth’s crust long before reaching the detectors. But they weren’t.
When researchers checked their findings against other experiments, nothing lined up. This means they didn’t detect neutrinos, but something entirely unknown. Could this be a new kind of particle? A glitch in reality? Or something even stranger?
Although it is not known whether the strange radio signals detected deep beneath the Antarctic ice are related to the rogue signals believed to originate from Earth's core, MrMBB333 suggests there could be a connection. He proposes that similar forms of electromagnetic interference (EMI) might be disrupting global electronics and even contributing to the mysterious blinking light phenomenon.
Another possible factor at play is that the magnetic field is weakening as well as Solar Cycle 25 — the current 11-year cycle of solar activity marked by the Sun’s magnetic field reversal and increasing sunspot activity. This cycle began in December 2019 and is expected to reach its peak in 2025.
Therefore, could this solar phenomenon be interfering with the rogue electromagnetic signals from the Earth’s core are behind the strange blinking lights observed around the world?
If that’s the case, although I don’t recall the blinking light phenomenon ever appearing this intensely before, then the strange lights may begin to fade as Solar Cycle 25 winds down. Still, that doesn’t explain the origin of the mysterious radio signals rising from deep beneath Antarctica’s ice.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Searching for Ancient Rocks in the ‘Forlandet’ Flats
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of the “Fallbreen” workspace using its onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam). The camera is located high on the rover’s mast and aids in driving. This image was acquired on May 22, 2025 (Sol 1512, or Martian day 1,512 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 14:39:01. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Henry Manelski, Ph.D. student at Purdue University
This week Perseverance continued its gradual descent into the relatively flat terrain outside of Jezero Crater. In this area, the science team expects to find rocks that could be among the oldest ever observed by the Perseverance rover — and perhaps any rover to have explored the surface of Mars — presenting a unique opportunity to understand Mars’ ancient past. Perseverance is now parked at “Fallbreen,” a light-toned bedrock exposure that the science team hopes to compare to the nearby olivine-bearing outcrop at “Copper Cove.” This could be a glimpse of the geologic unit rich in olivine and carbonate that stretches hundreds of kilometers to the west of Jezero Crater. Gaining insight into how these rocks formed could have profound implications for our constantly evolving knowledge of this region’s history. Perseverance’s recent traverses marked another notable transition. After rolling past Copper Cove, Perseverance entered the “Forlandet” quadrangle, a 1.2-square-kilometer (about 0.46 square mile, or 297-acre) area along the edge of the crater that the science team named after Forlandet National Park on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Discovered in the late 16th century by Dutch explorers, this icy set of islands captured the imagination of a generation of sailors searching for the Northwest Passage. While Perseverance is in the Forlandet quad, landforms and rock targets will be named informally after sites in and around this national park on Earth. As the rover navigates through its own narrow passes in the spirit of discovery, driving around sand dunes and breezing past buttes, we hope it channels the perseverance of the explorers who once gave these rocks their names.
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By USH
What would you do if you suddenly felt an unseen presence, turned around—and found yourself face to face with a seven-foot-tall, insect-like entity? Since 2006, anglers along New Jersey’s Musconetcong River have reported startling encounters with just such a being: a towering, humanoid creature that closely resembles a praying mantis.
But these aren’t just fleeting sightings. Witnesses frequently describe deeply unsettling experiences: telepathic communication, a sense of their thoughts or memories being accessed, and profound physiological effects. Consistent patterns emerge—electronic devices glitch, the surrounding forest falls unnaturally silent, and a strange, low-frequency hum seems to vibrate through the air.
More intriguingly, these mantis-like figures aren’t limited to modern encounters. Strikingly similar forms appear in ancient art across the globe, from 8,000-year-old cave paintings to references in Egyptian iconography. Could these entities have been with us since the dawn of civilization?
Theories vary widely. Some suggest these beings are an advanced species of insectoid extraterrestrials, possibly master geneticists overseeing hybridization programs involving humanity. Others propose a more Earth-bound origin, perhaps they’re a secret lineage of evolved terrestrial insects, hiding in the shadows of time.
And then there’s the interdimensional hypothesis: that these creatures aren’t physical in the way we understand, but exist in a parallel state of reality, occasionally phasing into ours.
Some researchers have even speculated that geological fault lines, like those beneath the Musconetcong River, could serve as energetic gateways, allowing these entities to cross between dimensions.
One thing is clear: the Mantis beings are watching and they may have been here far longer than we’ve dared to imagine.
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By USH
The Curiosity rover continues to capture fascinating anomalies on the Martian surface. In this instance, researcher Jean Ward has examined a particularly intriguing discovery: a disc-shaped object embedded in the side of a mound or hill.
The images were taken by the Curiosity rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) on April 30, 2025 (Sol 4526). To improve clarity, Ward meticulously removed the grid overlay from the photographs, enhancing the visibility of the object.
To provide better spatial context for the disc’s location, Ward assembled two of the images into a collage. In the composite, you can see the surrounding area including a ridge, and the small mound where the disc appears partially embedded, possibly near the entrance of an opening.
The next image offers the clearest view of the anomaly. Ward again removed the grid overlay and subtly enhanced the contrast to bring out finer details, as the original image appeared overly bright and washed out.
In the close-up, displayed at twice the original scale, the smooth arc of the disc is distinctly visible. Its texture seems unusual, resembling stone or a slab-like material, flat yet with a defined curvature.
Might this disc-like structure have been engineered as a gateway, part of a hidden entrance leading to an architectural complex embedded within the hillside, hinting at a long-forgotten subterranean stronghold once inhabited by an extraterrestrial civilization?
Links original NASA images: https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1461337/ https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1461336/https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1461335/
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