Upcoming High Definition Space Telescope

[Anomalocaris]

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will be “in many ways a hundred times” more capable than Hubble, isn’t launching until 2018, but already astrophysicists are thinking about its successor. They’re calling it the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST). That’s it on the far right, towering over both its predecessors.

Newly Proposed High Definition Space Telescope

[Anomalocaris]

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With an estimated cost of $8 billion to $9 billion, HDST would be a game changer, and if it advances beyond the concept phase, it would launch in the 2030s. With a mirror 25 times the size of Hubble's, HDST could delve deep into the universe's past to trace how gasses enriched with the elemental ingredients of life moved in and out of galaxies.

HDST also could examine dozens of Earth-like exoplanets that are too tiny for the Hubble telescope and its immediate successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, to see. HDST would scour their atmospheres for signs of alien life, perhaps finally answering whether humanity is alone in the cosmos.

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