Advanced Concepts

Our staff coordinates the Space Telescope Science Institute’s involvement in community-led concept studies of future space observatories and astronomical instrumentation. Our teams help define scientific goals and observational requirements, and provide key input to guide those scientific goals through mission and instrument design. We link mission design decisions to scientific productivity via high-fidelity data simulations and analysis tools.

Our staff is currently involved in four major NASA strategic mission concept studies that could become flagship space telescopes in the 2030s and 2040s, including the Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) observatory, a concept for a 9- to 15-meter space telescope that will provide unprecedented spatial resolution, and the Origins Space Telescope (OST), a large (8- to-15-meter) far-infrared space telescope.

We also study advanced instrument concepts to enable these ambitious missions. Most notably, the Russell B. Makidon Optics Laboratory designs, tests, and evaluates high-contrast coronagraph concepts that will work with large segmented space telescopes to enable the direct detection and characterization of Earth-like planets around other stars.

• SYNERGY

  

  The Small Explorer UV Sky Survey Satellite was a proposed concept for an ultraviolet sky survey mission. Project timeline: 2015 to 2017.

• SCDA

  

  The Segmented Coronagraph Design and Analysis project includes theoretical and experimental designs for advanced high-performance coronagraphs. Project timeline: 2013 to present.