Inside NASA’s plan to expand the James Webb Space Telescope

Just over a year ago, when NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope ignited, dominating even mainstream media headlines, it looked like the start of a new era. Started with infrared sensors and crowned with 18 gold-plated mirrors, the JWST reminded the world that while most of us are stuck on Earth, the base isn’t all we have to explore.

After the resounding success of the JWST, NASA officials hit us with their sci-fi plans of a planetary defense system. They also managed to start the modern Apollo years with the Artemis I lunar mission — no matter the Cost — and even started to build a deposit of rock samples on Mars reminiscent of scenes from Star Trek. And in early January, at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA announced its intention to continue fueling a welcome revitalization of the US space program.

But of all that’s featured, what seems to have gotten quite a bit of public attention (mine included) is an update on something called the Observatory of Habitable Worlds.

Simply, this telescope should peer into the universe, detect an amazing variety of wavelengths of light in deep space, and even be usable in space, where it will actually sit right next to its predecessor, the JWST. .

The ultimate goal of this machine? Discover a planet with alien life as soon as possible.

Sound familiar?

Since the 1990s, thanks to incredible innovations like NASA Transiting Exoplanet Surveyscientists have discovered a impressive number of exoplanetsincluding the Earth twins, aquatic worlds, oddly shaped rugby orbsareas where he it’s raining diamonds and even places that literally remind us of hell.

A handful of them are considered “possibly habitable,” meaning they could potentially contain evidence of, at the very least, ancient microbial remains. Life as we know it. But we have yet to find a world where such life exists, or has existed.

NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, which the agency plans to launch in the 2040s, will be built specifically to achieve this certainty of life beyond Earth.

As Mark Clampin, director of the agency’s astrophysics division, told a NASA town hall meeting at the recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the primary scientific goal of this observatory will be to ” probe nearby stars for habitable planets and characterize them for evidence of life”. .”

The thrust behind this project is a report called the Astro2020 10-year survey, published in November 2021 by US advisers to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

In a nutshell, this report focused on three “great scientific challenges“Humanity should exert effort in the next decade. Two have to do with discovering new kinds of physics in the universe (think weird particles and the like) and improving our understanding of the origins and evolutions of galaxies.

But the third challenge — and the one the organization is leading with — is identifying habitable Earth-like worlds in other planetary systems and determining whether life exists elsewhere in the universe.

In other words, it is to answer the question: Are we alone?

“Over the past decade, uncertainty about the number of potentially habitable Earth-sized planets has been reduced by Kepler and other missions, and such planets are now known to be common. A better understanding of the complexity of planetary atmospheres allows us to identify the spectroscopy measurements needed to assess the signatures of life,” the 2021 report states.

So, in response to recommendations from the decade, NASA created what it calls the Great Observatory Technology Maturation Program, or GOMAP.

As reported by Jeff Foust of SpaceNews, Clampin said the first three stages of GOMAP, which had to do with organizing and policymaking, are nearly complete. Phase two, he explained, will deepen the Habitable Worlds mission.

“We can develop a broad portfolio of missions to pursue visionary goals, such as the search for life on planets orbiting stars in our galactic neighborhood – and at the same time harness the wealth of 21st century astrophysics through to a panchromatic fleet,” Fiona Harrison, chair of the division of physics, mathematics, and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and co-chair of the steering committee, said in a National Academies statement on the 2021 report.

As I mentioned earlier, the Observatory of Habitable Worlds is expected to launch sometime in the 2040s., unless the agency is able to approximate this deadline. What could happen.

Foust reported that during a January 11 lecture session at the American Astronomical Society, Jason Tumlinson, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, suggested ways to change budgets to introduce a shorter timeline for the observatory. Overall, these tweaks could move the HWO’s first mission to 2035.

But since the HWO’s potential launch falls so far in the future, we don’t know much about what it might look like.

Here’s what we know so far

At this point, based on what the 2021 decadal survey asked, the HWO should be a telescope about 6 meters (or 20 feet, almost the size of the JWST) that operates in ultraviolet wavelengths , visible and near infrared of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Visible wavelengths are those we can see with our own eyes, ultraviolet is Hubble’s specialty and infrared is the area of ​​expertise of the James Webb Space Telescope.

The report – which specifically draws on ideas from what appears to be an earlier version of HWO called NASA’s Habitable Exoplanet, or Habex, Observatory – also suggested that this observatory would cost something like $11 billion. It’s about a billion dollars more than the cost of the JWST.

And as for the location of the Observatory of Habitable Worlds, it could very well be the JWST’s new neighbor – as Clampin said, it will be sent to the second Lagrange point, precisely where humanity’s current glassy muse. The second Lagrange point, or L2, is a point of gravitational equilibrium between the Earth and the sun that is one million kilometers away.

L2 is pretty perfect for space robots because it can anchor them in orbit around our bright yellow star while simultaneously shielding them from solar radiation.

And fascinatingly, one major upgrade that will set the HWO apart from the JWST is the fact that this future observatory will likely be “serviceable.” This means NASA would be able to robotically maintain and improve the telescope even while it’s locked in space at L2 – extending its lifespan and parrying bonuses like it’s just coming straight out. of a video game.

The JWST does not have this option. Theoretically speaking, if something happened to the JWST, scientists couldn’t exactly fix it.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which floats much closer to us as it is currently in Earth orbit, was iconic for its ease of use – audiences were mesmerized as they watched scientists in uniforms climb to the top of the telescope and adjust its components by the air. That’s part of what earned it its beloved name: The People’s Telescope.

So what can we expect from the HWO? As noted in the 10-year survey, this futuristic observatory will hopefully be able to spot around 25 potentially habitable exoplanets, a sample size that the authors say would provide “robustness in the face of uncertainties in the rate of occurrence of worlds of the size of the Earth, and against the hazards associated with particular near-Earth systems.”

To sum up, the report basically states that the HWO could be a compromise between HabEx and a scaled down version of NASA Luvoir conceptor large UV optical infrared telescope.

The latter has a launch date of the mid-2030s and should also be serviceable, but is much larger than 6 meters.

Its premise is also much more general than HWO’s appears to be — “Luvoir’s wide range of capabilities, including its wide range of UV-NIR wavelengths, will allow it to study phenomena yet to be discovered and to answer questions that we don’t yet know how to ask, to make people dream”, indicates the agency in an overview of the Luvoir mission.

Although, again, HWO shouldn’t touch the sky for at least another decade – more if the mission faces the same obstacles as Artemis that I encountered.

That doesn’t mean NASA’s new era of space exploration will experience a pause, of course. In this year onlywe have much to look forward to.