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For many years, lightweighted sandwich-style mirror blanks made from Corning's Ultra-Low Expansion glass (ULE ™ ) have been used in space telescope systems that demand superior optical performance. Despite the superior performance of this technology, the historically high cost and long schedule to procure such a blank has limited their use to only the most elite missions. Future missions, such as JWST, will seek to dramatically reduce the historical cost/schedule paradigm for ULE ™ blanks by capitalizing on economies-of-scale associated with a multi-segment design. However, for this blank technology to become accessible to a broader range of missions, fundamental changes in technical and business approaches are needed. Over the last four years, ATK COI has worked to develop the requisite technologies to produce ULE ™ mirror blanks in-house, with an emphasis on reducing cost and schedule. Our focus has been in three areas: process development to enable reclamation of ULE ™ glass residuals, glass fusion process qualification, and tooling cost reduction. The status of each of these areas is presented, and conclusions drawn about possible future costs of lightweight ULE ™ mirror blanks. Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/29/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx Proc. of SPIE Vol. 5179 19 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/29/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx

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