BROOMFIELD, Colo., July 12,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- BAE Systems and strategic
partners L3Harris Technologies and the Space Telescope Science
Institute (STScI) have been selected as one of three teams to
mature technologies in support of NASA's Habitable Worlds
Observatory (HWO) mission concept. A first of its kind telescope,
HWO will be designed to seek out signs of life beyond our solar
system and conduct transformational observations of the universe.
Its driving goal is to identify and examine a promising sample of
Earth-like planets orbiting other stars to determine if they could
show signs of hosting life. The observatory would also provide a
powerful lens to explore the stars, the planets of our solar
system, galaxies, and the evolution of the universe with
unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.
A first of its kind telescope, HWO will be
designed to seek out signs of life beyond our solar system.
Together, the team will conduct a two-year research effort
called the Ultra-stable Large Telescope Research and Analysis
Program – Critical Technologies (ULTRA-CT). The program is meant to
close gaps in the performance of large space telescopes through the
advancement of ultra-stable optical systems. BAE Systems'
Laura Coyle, principal optical
engineer and astrophysics technology lead for the Space &
Mission Systems sector, will serve as the principal investigator
for the effort. ULTRA-CT continues the team's work from two
previous NASA awards, ULTRA, a one-year study that identified
technology gaps for large, segmented systems, and ULTRA-TM, a
four-year technology maturation effort for key component-level
technologies.
Detailed observations of exoplanets can be extremely
challenging, largely because the light they reflect is so much
fainter than the star they orbit. For an Earth-like planet around a
Sun-like star this brightness ratio, or "contrast," is about 10
billion to 1. While this unprecedented level of starlight
suppression would be achieved with a coronagraph, an extremely
stable, large telescope is necessary to collect enough
well-controlled light to feed this instrument, as well as provide
high-resolution imaging. In this case, the telescope stability
required to support 10 billion to 1 contrast is on the order of
picometers – or one trillionth of a meter — far beyond the
capabilities of current state-of-the-art systems. To put this
into perspective, the HWO telescope will need to be a thousand
times more stable than the James Webb Space Telescope.
"Even slight thermal changes and minor vibrations will impact
the telescope's ability to maintain the contrast necessary to make
these observations, so we need a system with both passive and
active elements to minimize and compensate for disturbances," said
Coyle. "Bolstered by a legacy of supporting NASA's most
ambitious missions, our ULTRA team of engineers is excited to
develop technologies that will address stability at the picometer
level and continue to advance this groundbreaking project."
HWO is NASA's next flagship astrophysics mission after the Nancy
Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is currently scheduled to launch
by 2027.
BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems has a strong heritage of
supporting all of NASA's flagship astrophysics missions, including
the Great Observatories — the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space
Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and Compton Gamma-Ray
Observatory — the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Roman Space
Telescope.
www.baesystems.com/US
@BAESystemsInc
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bae-systems-selected-to-research-next-generation-stable-optical-system-for-nasas-habitable-worlds-observatory-302195908.html
SOURCE BAE Systems, Inc.