NASA is planning to build a telescope to search for habitable worlds. Here’s what you need to know.
NASA is planning to build a telescope to search for habitable worlds. The project is at least a decade away from completion, but NASA has begun developing the necessary underlying technology. The contracts were awarded to three companies, at a cost of $17.5 million. Work is expected to begin in late summer 2024. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is a mission that plans to launch a large space telescope with the main purpose of directly photographing Earth-like planets around stars like our Sun.
A cutting-edge telescope
This instrument will also be able to study their atmosphere to look for chemical traces of signs of life. The mission is still in its early planning stages with working groups examining the science objectives and how to achieve them. It is believed that, based on existing research on exoplanets, one in five stars likely has an Earth-like planet orbiting around it.
The search for life in the universe
Of course, the entire premise of the search for life in the Universe is based on the fact that life is somehow similar to ours. There may well be life based on a completely different chemistry, but if we want to find life then we might as well look for life like ours, rather than aiming for something completely different. To this end, the HWO will look for chemicals such as oxygen and methane and other traces that suggest the presence of life.
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