Making the paper: Ermanno Borra.

The article illustrates how Italian astronomer Ermanno Borra initiated the creation of an infrared-spectrum telescope on the moon. Borra and his colleagues from Laval University in Quebec City, Quebec revived the idea of a liquid-mirror telescope (LMT). A lunar LMT needed to be very cold and a highly reflective liquid. Borra and a graduate student added metal coatings to thick and syrupy liquids. However, it was ionic liquids that provided the breakthrough for their team.