The Telescope That Will Find Life Out There
NASA has taken the first steps of revealing the next generation space telescope, that will finally do what science has been asking for.
They’re calling it HWO for now, the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Wait! Didn’t we just launch the James Webb Space Telescope? Yes, we did, but remember how incredibly delayed it was. It’s already yesterday’s technology. It cannot be robotically upgraded. It (probably) cannot spot biosignatures on exoplanets — meaning it doesn’t have the resolution to spectroscopically analyze an exoplanet’s atmosphere to look for signs of life.
Finding life out there has long been at the top of the Decadal Planetary Survey, a report put out by “the science community” every 10 years telling NASA what scientists want them to focus on. (Hint: the silly Artemis program to build a moon base has never made the top 10. It’s a pork project to justify NASA administrator Bill Nelson’s desire to keep money flowing to legacy Space Shuttle contractors, and it comes at a cost to real science projects. It’s part of why JWST was delayed, and it’s why we don’t already have a lander on Europa, and it’s why we don’t already have HWO under construction. But enough of my funding ranting.)
HWO has two parents — HabEx and LUVOIR. These were the leading two of four competing next-gen space telescope proposals. LUVOIR was intended to be the ultimate mega space telescope with every capability we could think of, and with a gigantic 15-meter mirror. HabEx was laser focused on finding Habitable Exoplanets; it was a gigantic coronagraph (a telescope with a black dot in the middle to block out the light from the star it was looking at to make the planets more visible) and it included a companion spacecraft, a great starshade that would fly out 100,000 km and block more of that light.
HWO is designed to have some of the capabilities of each. It won’t include the additional cost and risk of a companion spacecraft, and it won’t be nearly as big as LUVOIR. But it will indeed be able to resolve explanetary atmospheric spectra. If there’s life out there, HWO can find it.
Personally, I give JWST a 15% chance of finding life. I give HWO an 85% chance.
HWO’s design will continue to evolve, and they’re currently looking at a 2040 readiness date. That will probably slip, as these things tend to do, especially if NASA continues to ignore the science community.
Anyway, that’s the HWO. Become a fan. Read more about it here.