A billion-dollar telescope is already in development. It is designed to include its flagship, "Large Earth Finder," to search for habitable Earth-like planets.
The Giant Magellan Telescope won't be operational until the early 2030s, but it should be worth the wait, especially for its flagship instruments, the "Large Earth Finder" and "Near-Infrared Spectrograph."
According to Rebecca Bernstein, Chief Scientist for the Giant Magellan Telescope, this telescope will enhance the research done with both JWST and the Vera Rubin Observatory. It has two strategically placed pieces of equipment to do direct imaging of Earth-like planets to locate planets that may harbor life, Forbes reported.
According to its website, the Large Earth Finder will weigh other planets that resemble Earth and look for biosignatures like oxygen in their atmospheres, such as oxygen. Characterizing quasars and the stars with the least amount of metal, such as the [Fe/H]-7.1 star SMSS J031300.36-670839.3, are some of the other specialties. The Large Earth Finder can initially operate in natural vision with a high spatial resolution visible light Echelle spectrograph with red and blue channels.
It is the sole high-resolution visible spectrograph for the first ten years of operation on all three of the intended extremely large telescopes worldwide. As the initial science instrument, the device will be mounted on the Giant Magellan Telescope.
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