NASA has selected three industry proposals to help develop technologies for future large space telescopes and plan the mission concept for the agency’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, which could be the first space telescope designed to search for life outside our solar system. .
The mission would take direct images of Earth-like planets around stars like our Sun and study their atmospheres for chemical signatures of life, as well as enabling other research into our solar system and universe. NASA is currently in the early stages of planning this mission concept, with community working groups exploring its fundamental science goals and how best to pursue them. The agency is also in the process of establishing a Habitable Worlds Observatory Technology Maturation project office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“The Habitable Worlds Observatory will be a historically ambitious mission, so we are taking a deliberate and strategic approach to its development and laying the groundwork now. We will need to bring together diverse expertise from government, academia and industry, while leveraging technologies and lessons learned from our previous large space telescopes,” said Mark Clampin, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. «With these awards, “We are excited to engage the industry to help close the technology gaps to make this innovative mission a reality.”
Last January, NASA requested proposals from industry to help advance key technologies that will eventually be needed for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. For example, the mission will require a coronagraph (an instrument that blocks light from a star so we can better see nearby objects) thousands of times more capable than any previous space coronagraph, and a stable optical system that does not move more than the width of an atom during its observations.
To help improve readiness for these technologies, NASA has selected the following proposals for two-year fixed-price contracts with a combined value of $17.5 million, whose start is scheduled for the end of summer 2024:
– “Research and analysis of ultrastable telescopes: critical technologies (ULTRA-CT)”. This project will focus on high-fidelity modeling and subsystem demonstrations to support future development of “ultra-stable” optical systems beyond current state-of-the-art technologies.
– “Technological maturation for astrophysical space telescopes (TechMAST)”. This project seeks to advance the integrated modeling infrastructure necessary to navigate design interdependencies and compare potential mission design options.
– “STABLE: System technologies for the architecture baseline.” This project will focus on mature technologies that support the telescope’s features, such as a deployable deflector and a structure to support the optical train, while mitigating the impact of environmental or system disturbances.
This work will continue with industry participation begun in 2017 under NASA’s “System-Level Segmented Telescope Design” requests, which concluded in December 2023. The new proposals selected will help inform NASA’s approach to planning the Habitable Worlds Observatory, as the agency builds on technologies from its James Webb Space Telescope and the future Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and identifies where future investments are needed.
