Launching a follow-on to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Starship, for example, could unshackle the mission from onerous mass and volume constraints, which typically drive up complexity and cost, a panel of three astronomers recently told the National Academies’ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“The availability of greater mass and volume capability, at lower cost, enlarges the design space,” said Charles Lawrence, the chief scientist for astronomy and physics at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The presentation was given last week alongside Martin Elvis, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT.
But astronomers are starting to get serious in planning for rockets like the Starship, or Blue Origin’s New Glenn with a slightly smaller 7-meter payload fairing, to be available to loft the next generation of big space telescopes.
In this survey, known in shorthand as Astro2020, a distinguished panel of scientists laid out a roadmap for NASA to spend the bulk of the 2020s developing technologies and designs for the next series of “great observatories” that will follow the likes of Hubble, Chandra, James Webb, and the Roman Space Telescope scheduled for launch in 2027.
First should be a large telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would be comparable in size to Webb with a primary mirror around 6 meters (20 feet) across and a coronagraph or a starshade to blot out starlight, enabling direct observations of planets around other stars, or exoplanets.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 246 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Launching a follow-on to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Starship, for example, could unshackle the mission from onerous mass and volume constraints, which typically drive up complexity and cost, a panel of three astronomers recently told the National Academies’ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“The availability of greater mass and volume capability, at lower cost, enlarges the design space,” said Charles Lawrence, the chief scientist for astronomy and physics at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The presentation was given last week alongside Martin Elvis, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT.
But astronomers are starting to get serious in planning for rockets like the Starship, or Blue Origin’s New Glenn with a slightly smaller 7-meter payload fairing, to be available to loft the next generation of big space telescopes.
In this survey, known in shorthand as Astro2020, a distinguished panel of scientists laid out a roadmap for NASA to spend the bulk of the 2020s developing technologies and designs for the next series of “great observatories” that will follow the likes of Hubble, Chandra, James Webb, and the Roman Space Telescope scheduled for launch in 2027.
First should be a large telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would be comparable in size to Webb with a primary mirror around 6 meters (20 feet) across and a coronagraph or a starshade to blot out starlight, enabling direct observations of planets around other stars, or exoplanets.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 246 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!