  This study proposes a new way to manufacture large lightweight aspherics for
space telescopes using Stress Mirror Polishing (SMP). This technique is well
known to allow reaching high quality optical surfaces in a minimum time period,
thanks to a spherical full-size polishing tool. To obtain the correct surface'
aspheric shape, it is necessary to define precisely the thickness distribution
of the mirror to be deformed, according to the manufacturing parameters. We
first introduce active optics and Stress Mirror Polishing techniques, and then,
we describe the process to obtain the appropriate thickness mirror distribution
allowing to generate the required aspheric shape during polishing phase. Shape
optimization procedure using PYTHON programing and NASTRAN optimization solver
using Finite Element Model (FEM) is developed and discussed in order to assist
this process. The main result of this paper is the ability of the shape
optimization process to support SMP technique to generate a peculiar aspherical
shape from a spherical optical surface thanks to a thickness distribution
reshaping. This paper is primarily focused on a theoretical framework with
numerical simulations as the first step before the manufacturing of a
demonstrator. This two-steps approach was successfully used for previous
projects.
