Conclusion
Jon Holmes, of SIRA and the Smart Optics Faraday Partnership, explained what the partnership was doing in terms of promotion of links between workers in the field and in providing a technology road map for each relevant market sector. The technology translators Jon Holmes (SIRA), Steve Welch (MSSL), Philip Parr- Burman (ATC) and Mark Bonnar (ATC) will work to help set up links between potential collaborators, suppliers and customers. Development of the road map will involve identifying opportunities for smart optics, understanding drivers and risks, establishing the timescale and funding dynamics, and looking at UK research and industry activities.
In summary, then, this new stream of technology seems superficially to offer more of the same: namely the ability of an instrumentation designer to engineer trade-offs between optical and non-optical properties, both in terms of physical performance budgets but also encompassing considerations of cost and risk. However, the advances are such that radically improved means of optical measurement may soon become available, and in so doing it will eventually be possible to address completely new questions in astronomy.
