NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory will consist of a segmented telescope and high contrast coronagraph to characterize exoplanets for habitability. Achieving this objective requires an ultra-stable telescope with wavefront stability of picometers in certain critical modes. The NASA funded Ultra-Stable Large Telescope Research and Analysis – Technology Maturation program continues to mature key component-level technologies for this new regime of “ultra-stable optical systems,” including active components like segment edge sensors, actuators and thermal hardware, passive components like low distortion mirrors and stable structures, and supporting capabilities like precision metrology. This paper will present an update to the latest results from hardware testbeds and simulations in the areas listed above. It will also contain a correction to previously published results of Ball’s Integrated Demo, which consists of a capacitive sensor and three actuators operating in closed loop.
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