The following is an interview with Matt Mountain, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), regarding new telescopes that could allow us to see if there is life on other planets. You can read more here. What kind of telescope would be needed to find life on other planets? We will need a […]
The following is an interview with Matt Mountain, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), regarding new telescopes that could allow us to see if there is life on other planets. You can read more here.
What kind of telescope would be needed to find life on other planets?
We will need a large space telescope for two reasons. First planets are really faint, at 30 light-years distant and Earth is as faint or than the faintest galaxy in the Hubble Deep Filed and we have to take that light and dissect it into its components (take a spectrum) to detect evidence of bio-signatures, or potential evidence of life. The second, compounding reason is that these faint plants have to be spatially resolved (differentiated) from their very bright parent star. Which means telescope have to have great spatial resolution which comes from a large diameter telescopes. So to have a realistic chance of detecting bio-signatures from an earth-like planet circling a sun-like star ten of light years from here will take a space telescope of at least 10m to 16m in diameter.
What do we have to do to make these telescopes?
We have to invest in new technologies, extending on what we have already dome for the James Webb Space Telescope. We have to build even lighter mirrors (which we have started and showed an example at the Panel at NASA HQ) and find ways to make use of NASA’s huge new rocket it is developing, the Space Launch System (SLS). We then have to decide this is something we want to do and make the commitment over the next 10 years to work in partnership with NASA, its exploration program and NASA’s international partners to launch such a large telescope into space.
Where in the galaxy would the telescope be pointed to observe for signs of life?
At this point we don’t know. That is where the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST and the Transiting Explorer Survey Satellite (TESS) come in. Their job is to find the most suitable near-by planetary systems (within approximately 50 to 100 light years of our sun) for such an new telescope to look at.
Why do you, personally, want to look for other species so badly?
I think its a fascinating question to ask “has life occurred elsewhere in the Universe, are we unique or is life ‘inevitable”? Its a question our species has been asking for millennia, and for the first time in human history the science and technology have converged to a point that we have a legitimate chance of finding the answer within the next 15 – 20 years from now.
When can we expect to make these strides toward finding other life?
Its taken twenty years to get the James Webb built, I wish I was more optimistic it won’t take another twenty to to get this Life Finding Telescope built. The technology and launch systems are already almost there. JWST will prove deployable optics will work in 2018, and NASA plans to launch its new large rocket, the SLS, in 2017. The the pieces are all there.
How much time, effort and money would it take to make these telescopes?
I don’t think we know yet, we have to get newer lighter weight mirrors than we use on JWST developed, and we don’t really know how NASA will costs the launches of its new SLS. I’m hoping by being smart and innovative such a telescope could be built for a comparable cost (in todays dollars) as the Hubble Space Telescope, or the James Webb Space Telescope. Its fascinating what technology can do for you. If we had the technologies we are using today on 6.5m JWST, the 2.4m HST would have cost eight-times less than it did using the 1980’s space technologies that were used to build Hubble.
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