WASHINGTON, May 31, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- NASA announced Friday it selected three industry
proposals to help develop technologies for future large space
telescopes and plan for the agency's Habitable Worlds Observatory
mission concept, which could be the first space telescope designed
to search for life outside our solar system.
The mission would directly image Earth-like planets around stars
like our Sun and study their atmospheres for the chemical
signatures of life, as well as enable other investigations about
our solar system and universe. NASA is currently in the early
planning stages for this mission concept, with community-wide
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, strategic
approach to its development and laying the groundwork now. We will
need to bring together diverse expertise from government, academia,
and industry, while building on 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're excited to engage industry to help close technology gaps to
make this groundbreaking mission a reality."
In January 2024, NASA solicited
industry proposals to help advance key technologies that will
eventually be necessary for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. For
example, the mission will require a coronagraph – an instrument
that blocks the light of a star so we can better see nearby objects
– thousands of times more capable than any prior space coronagraph,
and a stable optical system moving no more than the width of an
atom during its observations.
To help further the readiness of these technologies, NASA has
now selected the following proposals for two-year, fixed-price
contracts with a combined value of $17.5
million, targeted to begin by late summer 2024:
- "Ultra-stable Telescope Research and Analysis - 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.
- Principal investigator: Laura Coyle, Ball Aerospace (now
BAE Systems)
- "Technology Maturation for Astrophysics Space Telescopes
(TechMAST)"
- This project seeks to advance the integrated modeling
infrastructure required to navigate design interdependencies and
compare potential mission design options.
- Principal investigator: Alain
Carrier, Lockheed Martin
- "STABLE: Systems Technologies for Architecture Baseline"
- This project will focus on maturing technologies that support
telescope features, such as a deployable baffle and a structure to
support the optical train, while mitigating the impact of system or
environmental disturbances.
- Principal investigator: Tiffany Glassman, Northrop
Grumman
This work will continue industry involvement started in 2017
under NASA's "System-Level Segmented Telescope Design"
solicitations, which concluded in December
2023. The new selected proposals will help inform NASA's
approach to planning for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, as the
agency builds on technologies from its James Webb Space Telescope
and future Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and identifies where
future investments are needed.
To learn more about NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory
visit:
https://go.nasa.gov/HWO
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SOURCE NASA