The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting research proposals for a program that seeks to develop modeling tools, surface and field controls and structures aimed at facilitating the demonstration of scalable, tiltable and damage-resilient liquid mirrors to support future space and ground telescope systems.
The Zenith program is a research and development initiative composed of three phases that will run over a period of 50 months, according to a notice published Friday.
Per DARPA, respondents should be prepared to build modeling and simulation tools and numerical approximations to assess the hydrodynamic motion of a liquid material while under the electromagnetic field’s influence.
The agency is also interested in research proposals that seek to explore advances in the field of electromagnetic field control, optics, material science, optical devices or systems.
DARPA will accept abstracts through Feb. 3 and full proposals through March 16.