With NASA’s huge James Webb Space Telescope coming together and due for launch in 2018, the agency has announced its next major astrophysics project: another telescope known as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). With a field of view more like a searchlight compared with Webb’s laser beam, WFIRST will aim to better understand the mysterious dark matter that holds galaxies together and dark energy that is speeding the expansion of the universe. In addition, it will be equipped to directly image planets around other stars.
“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,” John Grunsfeld, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said in a 17 February statement.
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