Experiments over the past two months by the University of Arizona have confirmed the performance of a next generation of adaptive optics that gives ground based telescopes the same or better performance than we get from the Hubble.

It literally floats in a magnetic field and changes shape in milliseconds, virtually real-time. Electro-magnetically gripped by 336 computer-controlled "actuators" that tweak it into place, nanometer by nanometer, the adaptive secondary mirror focuses star light as steadily as if Earth had no atmosphere. Astronomers can study precisely sharpened objects rather than blurry blobs of twinkling light.

Sounds simple enough. So why didn't we think of this before? According to Michael Lloyd-Hart of the UA Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics it's because it was "enormously technically challenging". A magnetic field with optical feedback to distort the lensing in realtime based on calibration star images and do it so reliably as to please the stringent exactitude of your average deep-space astronomer? Challenging? Yeah, I could believe that.