(NASA)
James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb), slated to launch in 2021, will be the premier space-based observatory of the next decade. Webb is a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror.
Webb observations will be used to study every phase in the history of the universe, including planets and moons in our solar system, and the formation of distant solar systems potentially capable of supporting life on Earth-like exoplanets. The Webb telescope will also be capable of making detailed observations of the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars, to search for the building blocks of life on Earth-like planets beyond our solar system.
Europa Clipper Mission
Jupiter’s moon Europa may have the potential to harbor life. The Europa Clipper mission will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Europa and investigate whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. Targeting a 2024 launch, the mission will place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter in order to perform a detailed investigation of Europa –– a world that shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust.
Scientists will use @NASAWebb as an incredible time machine to study six of the most far-flung and luminous quasars—very bright, distant and active supermassive black holes—along with their host galaxies to unlock the secrets of the early universe. (1/6) pic.twitter.com/E4NbyguRgt
— Space Telescope Science Institute (@SpaceTelescope) June 24, 2021
Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, though it will investigate whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the capability to support life. Understanding Europa’s habitability will help scientists better understand how life developed on Earth and the potential for finding life beyond our planet.
Dragonfly Mission to Titan
The Dragonfly mission will deliver a rotorcraft to visit Saturn’s largest and richly organic moon, Titan. Slated for launch in 2027 and arrival in 2034, Dragonfly will sample and examine dozens of promising sites around Saturn’s icy moon and advance our search for the building blocks of life.
This revolutionary mission will explore diverse locations to look for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth. Titan is an analog to the very early Earth, and can provide clues to how prebiotic chemistry under these conditions may have progressed.
Nancy Grace Roman Telescope
Slated to launch in the mid-2020s, the Roman Space Telescope will have a field of view that is 200 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument, capturing more of the sky with less observing time. In addition to ground-breaking astrophysics and cosmology, the primary instrument on Roman, the Wide Field Instrument, has a rich menu of exoplanet science. It will perform a microlensing survey of the inner Milky Way that will reveal thousands of worlds orbiting within the habitable zone of their star and farther out, while providing an additional bounty of more than 100,000 transiting exoplanets.
The mission will also be fitted with “starglasses,” a coronagraph instrument that can block out the glare from a star and allow astronomers to directly image giant planets in orbit around it. The coronagraph will provide the first in-space demonstration of technologies needed for future missions to image and characterize smaller, rocky planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. Roman coronagraph will make observations that could contribute to the discovery of new worlds beyond our solar system and advance the study of extrasolar planets that could be suitable for life.
(Picture credit NASA)