A groundbreaking material that shrinks when heated and expands when cooled could revolutionize space telescope stability, aiding NASA’s quest to discover habitable exoplanets. A key objective of NASA’s Astrophysics Division is determining whether life exists beyond Earth. By analyzing exoplanet atmospheres through advanced telescopes, scientists can detect gases that may indicate habitability. However, this requires extreme precision, as starlight is a billion times brighter than the faint light reflected from Earth-sized exoplanets.

To achieve the necessary contrast ratio of 1:1,000,000,000, future telescopes will need unprecedented stability  – 1,000 times greater than current telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope. Meeting this challenge demands innovative materials, sensors, and system architectures. Collaborating with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ALLVAR is testing a novel negative thermal expansion (NTE) alloy, ALLVAR Alloy 30, which counteracts thermal distortions in telescope structures.

Current materials, though advanced, still fall short of the 10-picometer stability required for next-generation observatories. ALLVAR’s alloy compensates for thermal expansion in traditional materials like aluminum, titanium, and Invar, potentially improving thermal stability by 200 times.

Beyond telescopes, this technology has broader applications. It enhances thermal switches, bolted joints, and infrared optics, with uses in missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE-Night). ALLVAR has also developed commercial washers and spacers to maintain stability in extreme environments.

With NASA-funded research advancing its qualification for space, ALLVAR Alloy 30 and future tunable-expansion materials could transform fields from quantum computing to medical imaging, proving invaluable both in space and on Earth.

For more details, read the full article by NASA and visit the project’s page – NASA TechPort.