NASA announced that it will begin building a new telescope that is 100 times bigger than the Hubble Space Telescope to help discover the secrets of the universe. The announcement came months before China completes a 500-meter telescope to hunt for signs of extraterrestrial life.
The new telescope, which is being called as Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), will specifically explore dark energy and dark matter within the wider aim of discovering the evolution of the cosmos.
"WFIRST has the potential to open our eyes to the wonders of the universe, much the same way Hubble has," John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in an official statement. "This mission uniquely combines the ability to discover and characterize planets beyond our own solar system with the sensitivity and optics to look wide and deep into the universe in a quest to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter."
WFIRST will carry technologies that will allow it a field of view 200 times wider than Hubble, the Daily Mail reported. For this reason, it can scan large portion of space, using near-infrared light. It will also be capable of accurately measuring "shapes, positions and distances of millions of galaxies to track the distribution and growth of cosmic structures," according to NASA. The telescope can also collect specific details such as the chemical makeup of the atmospheres of exoplanets and other information that will allow scientists to search for places that are suitable to human life.
WFIRST takes off in 2024 and will operate when it reaches the gravitational balance point, called Earth-Sun L2. This area in space is located about one million miles from Earth. The WFIRST mission is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center while the telescope will be managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, according to RT.
