Mission and Vision

Our Mission

The IAC Laboratory for Innovation in Opto-Mechanics (LIOM) is dedicated to the design and development of disruptive technologies to build lighter and cheaper telescopes for the generations to come. Among them, we mainly focus on Fizeau interferometry, wavefront sensing, thin and light mirrors, pre-tensioned cables or tensegrity, photonics. The interferometric capability of the ExoLife Finder (ELF) telescope allows to act as a nulling interferometry to achieve high contrast capabilities to reconstruct the surface of extrasolar planets orbiting the nearest and brightest stars.

Our Vision

Our goal is to develop a new type of telescope that make use of disruptive technologies to detect life in planets outside our solar system.

How does ELF measure up?

Diving into the Numbers