The leading American astronomers have reached a consensus that the next generation of NASA’s great observatories should take advantage of the potential offered by new rockets, such as SpaceX’s Starship. By launching the successor to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using Starship, a mission would be freed from the strict mass and volume restrictions that typically increase complexity and cost.
Charles Lawrence, the chief scientist for astronomy and physics at the NASA reactive laboratory, stated, “The availability of larger mass and volume at a lower price expands the design space. We want to use this opportunity.”
A presentation by Lawrence, Martin Elvis from the Center for Astrophysics Harvard-Smithsonian, and Sarah Ciger, an astrophysicist and planetologist from MIT, discussed the impact of new powerful rockets on future astronomical studies. Earlier this year, Lawrence, Elvis, and Ciger published an article in Physics Today magazine which addressed this topic.
The Starship rocket, with its ability to carry over 100 metric tons into space at a significantly lower price compared to existing rockets, is poised to change the approach to the space industry. With a diameter of 9 meters, Starship offers almost twice the useful volume of any existing rocket.
However, astronomers are also considering the use of other rockets, such as New Glenn from Blue Origin, which has a slightly smaller 7-meter fairing. They are beginning to plan the utilization of these rockets to launch the next generation of large space telescopes.
In 2021, the National Academy presented a ten-year review of the main priorities in the field of astronomy and astrophysics for the US scientific community. In this review, a distinguished group of scientists proposed a roadmap for NASA, which suggests that technologies and projects for the next series of “great observatories” should be developed during the 2020s.
NASA policy is to follow the recommendations of the scientific community, and it is expected that by the end of the decade, NASA will officially begin the development of these new telescopes. The first telescope planned is a large observatory called the Inhabited Worlds Observatory, which will be comparable in size to the Webb and will be equipped with a coronagraph or star screen for observing planets around other stars.
The Inhabited Worlds Observatory, capable of detecting infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light, will focus on observing exoplanets that resemble Earth in order to search for worlds that could potentially support life. Subsequently, NASA aims to launch similarly ambitious telescopes in the