The crew of space shuttle Atlantis serviced Hubble one last time in 2009, so failure of any key component of Hubble now means the loss of a crucial instrument with visible-light capabilities, an asset that may not be replaced for years to come. It remains to be seen how this will work out for JWST and HDST alike, since Hubble required immediate repair following its launch in 1990. Like JWST, HDST would be out of range for repairs once deployed, and it would have to unfold and operate successfully on its own. NASA plans to test its SLS rocket in November 2018. The project envisions the telescope to be folded up for launch aboard a NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket sometime in the 2030s. Construction of the HDST can also utilize low-cost optical materials and simpler component design. It can operate at much warmer temperatures than JWST will, and it does not require extensive cryogenic testing on Earth. HDST does have some advantages in the cost department. The lessons learned from JWST, such as development, design, and getting the observatory from the drawing board to orbit, will prove crucial to HDST. There’s no official budget allocated to the HDST as of yet, and it’s still early in the game to make an official cost estimate, but unofficial estimates put it in the ballpark of $10 billion. Although it’s on track for a 2018 launch, JWST's budget is now nearly $9 billion, after an initial budget proposal of $1.6 billion. Take JWST: that project was plagued with cost overruns for years, culminating in the threat of cancellation in 2011. It would also be able to search for more distant and very faint Kuiper belt objects out beyond Pluto.” From Concept to Reality One of the gold-coated primary mirror segments for the James Webb Space Telescope in the lab.īut getting HDST to space won’t be easy. HDST would be able to detect features the size of the island of Manhattan on Jupiter. The images of Pluto that HDST would get would be similar in detail to those released by New Horizons when it was about three weeks out from closest approach. “We could monitor outer planets and satellites on long timescales. “HDST will have an important impact on solar system studies,” says Marc Postman (Space Telescope Science Institute). The proposed megascope would provide images up to 24 times sharper than those from Hubble. The HDST would also be capable of resolving structures 330 light-years across in the universe when it was just 3 billion years old (that is, out to a redshift of 2.) Such a device could be built into the structure of the telescope, or, even better, could consist of a free-flying occulting disk thousands of kilometers away. This will enable us either to detect extrasolar life, if such life is common, or at least place meaningful constraints on how rare extrasolar life is.”Ĭomposed of 54 mirror segments, HDST would also be outfitted with a starlight-blocking coronagraph, enabling it to directly image exoplanets around stars up to 100 light-years away. “Arguably, the most fascinating topic would be the ability to image dozens of extrasolar Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars, and to characterize their atmospheres. “There is no area of astronomy and astrophysics that HDST will not impact,” says Mario Livio (Space Telescope Science Institute). What HDST Can Do A comparison of the resolution of HST versus HDST.Īssociation of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) The HDST would - like Hubble - work at ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths, as well as visible light. Though the JWST has often been touted as the "successor to Hubble," it’s primarily an infrared workhorse. HDST’s diameter would almost double the effective diameter of the James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2018 for the same L2 orbit. The Sun-Earth L2 point is located 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) anti-sunward from the Earth. The HDST proposal calls for a segmented mirror 39 feet (12 meters) in aperture, which would be placed at the L2 Lagrange point, a stable region where the gravitational influences from the Sun and Earth balance out. Dubbed the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST), this instrument would peer deeper in space and time than ever before and enable astronomers to directly image nearby Earth-like exoplanets. institutions known as the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) recently unveiled a proposal to orbit a large, segmented-mirror telescope more than five times the diameter of the Hubble Space Telescope. An artist’s conception of the HDST in orbit.Ī consortium of 40 international affiliates and U.S. A proposal released earlier this month calls for a giant orbiting space telescope that could revolutionize astronomy - that is, if we can afford it.
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