NASA’s New Space Telescope Gets Green Light For Development

A new space telescope project at NAS has received the green light to proceed with its development and testing stages. This mission was originally one of the projects that were suggested for termination in NASA’s 2021 budget proposal.

NASA’s latest project is known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). Like the agency’s other space telescopes, WFIRST will be used to make new cosmic discoveries.

Recently, WFIRST passed a critical review process that assessed its programmatic and other technical features. Since the telescope’s design is already at an advanced stage, which NASA was able to achieve through the lessons learned from the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, the WFIRST was able to successfully pass the review process.

This means that the mission has been given the green light to move forward with its next phase, which involves developing its hardware.

“With the passage of this latest key milestone, the team will begin finalizing the WFIRST mission design by building engineering test units and models to ensure the design will hold up under the extreme conditions during launch and while in space,” NASA explained in a statement.

According to the agency, WFIRST is being designed to be more powerful than Hubble. With an improved viewing area, NASA is hoping to use WFIRST to detect even the faintest signals in space. Doing so would enable the telescope to uncover new cosmic objects such as exoplanets and dark energy.

“[It can] detect faint infrared signals from across the cosmos while also generating enormous panoramas of the universe, revealing secrets of dark energy, discovering planets outside our solar system (exoplanets), and addressing a host of other astrophysics and planetary science topics,” NASA stated.

WFIRST’s latest milestone serves as a huge step for the team behind the telescope, especially since the entire project was almost terminated last month. On Feb. 10, the White House discussed the 2021 budget proposal submitted by NASA.

One of the subjects tackled in the proposal was the projects that NASA was considering terminating. These include the WFIRST, which NASA considered canceling due to the growing costs of the development of the James Webb Space Telescope.