SPACE: Astronomers say new telescopes should take advantage of ‘Starship paradigm.’

In 2021, the National Academies released a once-in-a-decade review of the top astronomy and astrophysics priorities for the US science community. In this survey, known in shorthand as Astro2020, a distinguished panel of scientists laid out a roadmap for NASA to spend the bulk of the 2020s developing technologies and designs for the next series of “great observatories” that will follow the likes of Hubble, Chandra, James Webb, and the Roman Space Telescope scheduled for launch in 2027.

NASA’s policy is to follow the science community’s recommendations wherever possible. Sometime around the end of the decade, the thinking goes, NASA should be ready to officially kick off development of these new telescopes. First should be a large telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would be comparable in size to Webb with a primary mirror around 6 meters (20 feet) across and a coronagraph or a starshade to blot out starlight, enabling direct observations of planets around other stars, or exoplanets. This is a capability not available on Webb.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory, with sensitivity to light in infrared, visible, and ultraviolet wavelengths, would be tasked with observing Earth-like exoplanets in search of worlds that have the makeup to support life. Later, NASA should launch similarly ambitious far-infrared and X-ray telescopes to study the formation of stars, black holes, and galaxies, scientists recommended in 2021.

But: “These big, new multibillion-dollar missions wouldn’t start launching until the 2040s.”

This is thrilling stuff but the 2040s are really pushing it for me.