NASA built WFIRST wide-angle telescopes, hunting life out of Earth

NASA is currently building a new space telescope to search for extraterrestrial life and to help scientists decipher long-standing mysteries about the universe.

The telescope is called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) which possesses similar Hubble telescope capabilities but is equipped with a panorama lens. WFIRST will bring a wide array of field observation devices into space, allowing it to record images with depth and quality as Hubble does, but the field is 100 times more observable.

Besides the ability to cover a large area in space, WFIRST also has a system of coronagraph lenses that can block glare from stars , through which telescopes can see more clearly the planets around. and their atmosphere. Therefore, WFIRST is considered a technology that paves the way for the discovery and identification of Earth-like planets in the future.

WFIRST also has a system of coronagraph lenses that can block glare from stars.

Much of the task of finding and identifying extraterrestrials is now assigned to the Kepler space telescope, which has passed through its heyday and has many problems. In place of Kepler, NASA plans to launch a surface-cutting planetary exploration satellite (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - TESS) in 2017 and James Webb space telescope (JWST) in 2018.

WFIRST will be launched around the early 2020s, followed by the responsibility of legendary names like Hubble, Kepler and Spitzer. Combined, NASA will create a 3-point attack to search for new planets including close brothers to Earth, which can support life.

Currently, the total number of confirmed alien planets has reached more than 2,000 but NASA expects that when launched into orbit, the WFIRST telescope alone will be able to find thousands of extra planets in the central area of Milky Way galaxy.

Professor Brant Robertson - leader of the scientific potential research program from WFIRST's extraterrestrial observations, said: "The James Webb telescope will perform deep observation within a small range while WFIRST will cover larger areas with the same depth as Hubble. If they overlap and JWST still works well when WFIRST is launched, this will be a very powerful combination. "

In addition to the ability to detect and monitor the planet, WFIRST will be able to be used to track the mysterious effects of dark matter and dark energy in the history of the universe. In other words, this telescope will help us see the unknown parts of the universe.