Artist's concept of one design for the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory created in May 2024
HWO’s main objective would be to identify and directly image at least 25 potentially habitable worlds. It would then use spectroscopy to search for chemical biosignatures in these planets’ atmospheres, including gases such as oxygen and methane, which could serve as critical evidence for life. HWO would also use its high sensitivity and resolution capabilities to trace the evolution of galaxies and other cosmic structures.[3]
In 2023, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established a Great Observatory Maturation Program (GOMAP) to unite government, industry, and academia to develop the technologies needed for HWO.[3] GOMAP aims to draw on lessons from previous NASA missions to streamline development of the HWO concept and decrease budget and schedule risks for the future mission.
Two groups will guide the GOMAP activities for HWO: a Science, Technology, Architecture Review Team (START) and a Technical Assessment Group (TAG). The START will quantify HWO’s science objectives based on the Decadal Survey’s guidance and outline the observatory and instrument capabilities needed to accomplish them. Meanwhile, the TAG will study architecture options for HWO, identify and assess the mission architectures and technologies needed to enable those options, and evaluate the risks associated with those options.[4]
The HWO is designed to be launched on a super heavy-lift launch vehicle.[5] The HWO's team hope for the success of big launchers such as SpaceX's Starship, Blue Origin's New Glenn or the SLS due to their critical importance to the HWO's mission.[5] The HWO is planned have a 6–8 meter mirror for now, but its design should be flexible to leverage launchers with potentially double the mass and volume by the time the HWO launches in the 2040s.[5] Lee Feinberg, NASA HWO lead architect[5] and James Webb Space Telescope manager,[6] stays in communication with the three launchers' representatives. In 2024, he visited SpaceX to track Starship's progress.[5] Former NASA JPL architect Casey Handmer believes the HWO to be far too conservative compared to what is possible with Starship.[5] Handmer argues that Starship enables telescopes to scale up to the point of surface-level exoplanet imaging, potentially large enough to detect seasonal migration patterns.[5]
