A steering committee of scientists recommended that NASA create a single telescope nicknamed LUVEx (pronounced “loov-ex”), a combination of LUVOIR and HabEx (Some also refer to the telescope as IROUV, pronounced “eye-roov,” a reference to its observations in infrared, optical and ultraviolet light). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The concept was embraced in the Astro2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, the latest in the reports issued every 10 years by the U.S. The telescope would be a combination of two proposals to study potentially habitable worlds, the Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, and the Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor, or LUVOIR. “It boggles my mind that, in our lifetimes, we could have the capability of finding life on planets orbiting other stars.” If this telescope is orbited in the 2040s as proposed, “we as a human species will be able to answer whether we’re alone in the universe,” says Ruslan Belikov, an exoplanet scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. But even Roman won’t block enough light to image Earth-like planets.Ī newer, more refined machine would be required for that, and early discussions are underway among NASA managers and exoplanet scientists about the requirements for it. After its launch in 2026, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will point its 2.4-meter-diameter mirror to the stars in hopes of gathering direct images of gas giants. Which is not to say direct imaging will prove to be impossible. In fact, engineers have yet to figure out how to make masks and mirrors of the precise shape and smoothness to guarantee the necessary contrast. ![]() Webb does have an internal coronagraph of masks and mirrors for blocking light, but they probably lack the fidelity to filter out a planet like ours from the light of its sun. If a suspected Earth-like planet were found, imaging it would require blocking enough light from the host star so that the planet would suddenly become visible, and then enough photons would need to be eked out to create an image. Its transit spectroscopy technique isn’t optimal for analyzing the atmospheres of planets like ours, because we take so long to orbit around our suns. As exciting as this feat would be, what scientists want most of all is to identify possible Earth-sized worlds in the habitable zones around suns like ours, analyze their atmospheres and image them. If those planets have atmospheres, some of the light from the red dwarf must have passed through, and the spectral details of that light could tell scientists what their atmospheres consist of. Specifically, Webb has collected infrared light from TRAPPIST-1, a solar system in our galaxy consisting of seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting a red dwarf. Yet this magnificent machine, launched in December, has already begun delivering tantalizing spectral readings about a handful of such worlds. T he James Webb Space Telescope wasn’t conceived specifically to study exoplanets. Jonathan O’Callaghan spoke to project scientists to learn how the work is unfolding. ![]() ![]() NASA is starting to put together plans for a telescope that would launch in the 2040s to image Earth-like exoplanets and, perhaps, finally discover whether advanced life exists elsewhere. NASA’s next (next) telescope By Jonathan O'Callaghan | September 2022
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