NASA approves money for New Worlds Observer project
Webster Cash, chair of the Astronomy Department and chief scientist for the New Worlds Observer project, said he has had a particularly busy and thrilling week.
“I’m just now coming to grips with the fact that I’m now leading an effort that could end up spending $3 billion,” Cash said on Tuesday. “It’s very exciting,”
CU’s proposed project, which includes launching a large “star shade” with a telescope into deep space in an effort to discover new planets, has just been given $1 million by NASA to continue promotion and researh.
Cash said in a recent NASA research announcement, the New Worlds Observer mission was given the highest funding for further research, and was the only proposed mission in which NASA simply “said yes.”
The announcement came as a pleasant surprise to Cash, who said he was not expecting to hear the news until mid-March.
The announcement said the project will be given more funding and more momentum for entering into NASA’s decadal review. The review’s coveted “large mission grant” would allow the estimated $3.3 billion New Worlds Observer mission to become a reality.
NASA undergoes this search process every 10 years. The review is the result of extensive research by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation. The panel includes 100 scientists from all disciplines of astronomy who spend a year deciding what astronomical projects to support for the coming decade.
The panel will meet next year, when they will make recommendations for future missions such as Cash’s and submit their proposals to NASA. NASA will then choose one large mission proposal, which entails a price estimate of $1 billion or more.
“They’re only a few viable candidates for this number one position,” Cash said. “It has to be the right price range, and it has to be cutting-edge science.”
Cash said that he believes his project has both.
The New Worlds Observer project calls for a large, flower-petal shaped plastic disc, called a “star shade,” to be deployed from a giant telescope almost twice the size of Hubble, the space telescope currently in orbit.
The telescope alone is 80 percent of the estimated cost for the project, while the remaining 20 percent will go towards the development of the “star shade.”
The shade, made of a garbage bag-like plastic material, is intended to eclipse the light of distant stars once deployed, thus revealing the dimmer planets that orbit them.
Once given the go-ahead, Cash estimates that it would take seven years to deploy the telescope- five years to build it, and two years to get it ready for launch. The mission could launch as early as 2017.
If launched, experts say they anticipate the impact of the mission to be significant.
Aside from money and publicity coming into CU, where the effort will be led, proponents of the project say that its success can dictate the way humans live their lives.
“What else bigger could there be than finding life on another planet? I think this will make people feel less alone,” said Julia DeMarines, a senior astronomy major who is also a research assistant for the project.
Cash said that the newest developments in the life of this CU proposal have helped greatly to assure the success of the project over the coming year, and many years to come.
“This gives me a huge boost,” he said. “Now I’ve been blessed.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Spencer Everett at spencer.everett@colorado.edu.
