NASA plans to build new telescope for billions of dollars: It will be used to search for life on other planets

NASA plans to build a new telescope that will replace James Webb and will be used to search for life on other planets.

This goal is reflected in its name: Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO).

The launch of the new telescope is expected in the early 40's, and it will cost at least $11 billion U.S.

So far, little is known about the telescope.

As told during a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA Astrophysics Director Mark Klumpin, HWO, like James Webb, will be taken to the Lagrange point L2 at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

However, unlike James Webb, the new observatory will be robotically operated and will operate for decades.

According to preliminary reports, the new telescope will be sensitive to ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared wavelengths.

In addition to general astrophysical tasks, the telescope should also be able to detect signs of life on 25 nearby exoplanets similar to Earth.

The mirror at the telescope HWO will likely be segmented 6-meter - like James Webb, but thanks to the possibility of robotic maintenance and regular replacement of tools and parts telescope for at least a few decades will not lose relevance. It is also expected that the error in the curvature of the mirror surface of the telescope should be reduced by several orders of magnitude.

As tells Science.org, HWO will not be NASA's next flagship space telescope after James Webb: In 2027, the agency plans to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Observatory, a 2.4-meter survey telescope that will search for dark energy and exoplanets in space, which was recommended in 2010 by the Ten-Year Polling Committee of the National Research Council as the top priority for the next decade in astronomy.

Before choosing HWO as the next general project for the next-generation space telescope, NASA experts considered two alternative projects:

• HabEx with a 4-meter monolithic mirror and a coronagraph floating in space at a distance of 100,000 km from it, which can shield light from the star around which the exoplanet is circling, so you can see the exoplanet itself;
• LUVOIR - multipurpose observatory with a 15-meter segmented mirror, like James Webb.

While segmented mirrors cannot produce the same sharp images as monolithic mirrors, they can be folded and therefore easier to fit into a launch vehicle.

HWO will be something in between these two options.

As Mark Klumpin noted, NASA will take a conservative approach in developing HWO to avoid cost overruns and delays, as was the case in developing James Webb, which required many untested technologies, which took longer to refine than expected. In creating the new telescope, NASA plans to use technologies already developed or in development, including segmented mirrors like James Webb, and the coronagraph like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a built-in optical device to block starlight, and so on.