![]() ![]() ![]() "The big question is, are we alone?" he says. As such, the ATLAST project first has to recruit friends in the astronomical community, to which end Barstow presented ATLAST's case to an audience of exoplanet researchers at NAM. Given the exorbitant costs that JWST has racked up, those in charge of the purse strings may be reluctant to immediately fund another large space telescope. "It will be a multi-purpose telescope, so it will be able to study stars and galaxies, but one of the crucial things that it will be able to do is probe the habitable zones around stars like our own Sun and directly detect any Earth-like exoplanets that may be out there."Įxisting only as a concept design study produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute in the United States - the agency that manages the science operations of the Hubble Space Telescope - ATLAST still has a long way to go before being approved and funded by any space agency. "ATLAST is the next logical step beyond the JWST," Barstow tells Astronomy Now. However, Hubble has been in space for 24 years and is not expected to outlast the decade, while the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) set to launch in 2018 is an infrared telescope designed for probing dusty regions of the Universe and seeking the earliest galaxies, and not for taking the pretty pictures that Hubble excels at. ![]() ATLAST would operate at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, just like the Hubble Space Telescope currently does. Image: Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems/NASA/STScI.īarstow presented the case for the Advanced Technology Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) at this week's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) at the University of Portsmouth. Planning for a new giant space telescope armed with an unfolding mirror with a diameter of 8-16 metres should begin now to provide the true successor to Hubble by the 2030s, according to the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, Professor Martin Barstow of the University of Leicester.Īn artist's impression of ATLAST with a 16-metre segmented mirror. ![]()
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