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 has matured key component-level technologies in 10 areas spanning an “ultra-stable” architecture, 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 summarize the final results from the four-year ULTRA-TM program, including advancements in performance and/or path-to-flight readiness, TRL/MRL maturation, and recommendations for future work.
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