Forbes by Bruce Dorminey 7/23/2022
NASA needs to strike while the iron is hot; take a hard-learned lesson from the Apollo program and push forward with a Webb 2.0 —- an even more ambitious space-based optical observatory. Now, when both the public and the politicians are taking note is the time to move and secure NASA’s next legacy project.
At present, NASA’s next scheduled flagship space observatory will be the 2.4-meter Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) due for launch around the middle of 2027.
Roman has a field of view 100 times the area of Hubble or Webb and can survey large areas of the sky to Hubble-like depths, Jonathan Gardner, Webb’s deputy senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told me. With Roman, Webb and Hubble all working at once, Roman will discover objects that Webb, in the infrared, and Hubble, in the optical and ultraviolet (UV), can study in more detail, he says.
After the Roman telescope, the National Academy of Science’s 2020 Decadal Survey recommended a UV-optical-near infrared space telescope comparable in size to Webb, but optimized for studying exoplanets, says Gardner. It’s about the same size as Webb but could study exoplanets in ways beyond what Webb can do, he says.
The biggest driver for a Webb 2.0 is direct imaging of exoplanets, especially imaging of earth-like planets in the so-called habitable goldilocks zones around near-by stars, Asantha Cooray, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California in Irvine, who is head of a study group for a possible Webb successor, told me.
But how quickly we can get started on that mission may depend on when the design phase is funded by Congress, says Gardner.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2022/07/23/why-nasa-needs-a-webb-20-sooner-rather-than-later/?sh=6a82be965288
