An influential group of US astronomers has laid out its vision for the biggest and best space telescope yet—a worthy successor to the much-loved Hubble Space Telescope that some say could cost US$10 billion or more.
The proposed High-Definition Space Telescope (HDST) would have a mirror up to 12 metres across. That's 5 times the width of the 2.4-metre Hubble, which revolutionized astronomy with its sharp views of the cosmos, and nearly twice as wide as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is being readied for its 2018 launch. The HDST could finally answer the question of whether humans are alone in the Universe, by directly probing the atmospheres of dozens of extrasolar planets for signs of life. It could also dramatically reshape scientific understanding of how the Universe evolves.
Better yet, how about a lunar dark side obervatory? To read more, click here.