Deployable optics are optics that deploy, literally. Telescopes designed with deployable optics are compactly folded during launch and only unfold – or deploy – once safely in orbit. As remote sensing image quality metrics like signal-to-noise ratio and ground resolution scale with an increasing telescope aperture size, and deployable optics can accommodate a larger aperture as compared to a fixed telescope of the same volume and mass, this unfolding architecture allows for better performance in a smaller, cheaper-to-launch package.

As an example of a deployable optics system, consider the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In order to see distant galaxies in viable resolution, the primary aperture of JWST needed to quite large – about 6.5 metres in diameter. However, a satellite with a telescope of this size was too large to fit in a standard rocket fairing. So, JWST had to be folded during launch and only unfolded once positioned in its appropriate orbit.