The James Webb Space Telescope was 10 years late and $10 billion over budget.
Now that the telescope is in space, what should we do with it? There are five future missions to be excited about.
The James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures.
Nancy Grace had a telescope.
Nancy Grace Roman was NASA's first chief astronomer and the telescope was named after her. The main purpose is to map large swaths of the universe.
The original name is a clever play on words, as it shows the equation of state and relationship between pressure and density in the mathematical equations used to describe dark energy. The name WFIRST is derived from the meaning of the mission, which is to study dark energy.
The telescope will survey millions of galaxies and create a map of our neighborhood. Astronomers hope to tease out the evolution of dark energy by using the distribution of galaxies. The instrument will be able to discover millions of exoplanets by using the microlensing.
An artist's impression of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The image is from NASA.
The man is named LuvoIR.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a souped-up version of the James Webb Space Telescope. It's so big that it can't fit into a single rocket fairing without a really complicated folding of its mirror segments.
The Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor has a mirror diameter of over 15 meters. Astronomers hope the telescope can achieve a variety of astronomy objectives, such as observing the cloud tops of Jupiter with a 15-mile (25 kilometer) resolution and looking for biosignatures in the atmospheres of other planets.
The design phase is where LuvoIR is competing with other observatories for priority funding. The mega space telescope will be launched in the next two decades.
HabEx.
It's a hot topic in astronomy. The discovery of an Earth 2.0 would help us understand how common life is in the universe, and maybe even herald a discovery that we're not alone. Astronomers look for planets with similar mass and compositions to our home world in the right place to allow for liquid water.
We need to study the atmosphere of the planet to find biosignatures, which are chemical remnants of life. A lot of methane and an abundance of oxygen could be signs that there are organisms in that world.
The Habitable Exoplanet Resolving Mission hopes to do that. Proponents hope to launch HabEx in 2035. HabEx shines because of its star shade, a massive flying disc that blocks the light of individual stars, allowing the telescope to image exoplanets.
There is a person named Lisa.
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna is a space-based observatory. The European Space Agency will lead the effort to target the sources of the wave that can't be seen by ground-based detectors. The three satellites are all in the same position on the sun, with a separation of 1.5 miles.
The satellites can measure any slight changes to their distance by bouncing lasers between them. The observatory will be launched in 2034.
DARE.
There was a time before stars. The "Dark Ages" were named after the first few hundred million years after the Big bang. This era has not been observed with a telescope because it was dark.
There were tendrils of neutral hydrogen floating through that darkness. The neutral hydrogen emits light at 2.1 centimeters. 13 billion years ago, the universe had a wavelength of around 2 meters, and today it has redshifted to have a wavelength of around 6 feet.
That's in the radio spectrum, which means any attempts to detect this sort of radiation are overwhelmed by our radio chatter. The Dark Ages Radio Explorer is here.
DARE is currently in the design phase and is expected to be launched in the next few years. It's a relatively simple observatory, but it will be unique because it will be in the moon. The far side of the moon is free of human-generated radio interference. It's the best place to look for the Dark Ages.
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