The race is on for who will manufacture 1,000 mirrors for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Cranfield University in the United Kingdom has begun work on producing seven of the mirror segments for “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” with the aid of high-accuracy measurement systems from Hexagon Metrology. The current production is for prototype mirror segments. Once these are signed off, Cranfield University, as part of an as-yet-unnamed UK production company, will be able to bid for the manufacturing of more segments.

Built by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) the E-ELT, a ground-based telescope, will be 42 m in diameter and made up of 1,000 hexagonal mirror segments, each 1.5 m (4.9 ft) wide and just 5 cm (1.9 in.) thick. The E-ELT is four to five times larger and will gather 15 times more light than the largest optical telescopes operating today.

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