NASA's Next Telescope
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To manage such an enormous mirror, engineers have divided it into 18 pieces that will be folded together; they’ll be unfolded while the telescope is traveling to its final destination. Each segment is ground and polished to precise optical specifications (below). Engineers are taking extra precautions to avoid a repeat of the Hubble mishap, in which the mirror was incorrectly ground and polished, causing the telescope to produce blurry images until a service mission adjusted it.
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