Interesting
If it’s in micro-gravity, couldn’t they hold the secondary mirror with a magnetic cushion or something like that?
The complexity and reliability of deploying the secondary would be an issue. The secondary also has power and control cabling running through the supports to the spacecraft that carries the optics. The spikes could have been reduced by making the support arms much thinner, but I suspect they put a high value on long term reliability.
There have been proposals to use lasers for positioning micro satellite arrays that could dispense with physical connections. If there is a mirror on each spacecraft forming an optical resonator, the photons are be recycled thousands of times and amplify the momentum transfer. The laser gain medium is effectively inside the resonator thus improving efficiency. There’s all sorts of nifty possibilities, the author of the paper I referenced has a little company Y.K. Bae Corp looking for funding to fly micro satellite demonstrator arrays. With sufficiently large mirrors and optical meta materials and a “simple matter of engineering” this system could whisk payloads between the inner planets in a quickly via an "interplanetary photonic railway".
Actually I just had an epiphany and thought of a possible way to increase the effectiveness of the momentum transfer and possibly create a “momentum capacitor” that could radically transform orbital transfer in LEO...gonna see if anyone’s thought of my scheme and if not do the math and patent it.