NASA Launches A New Telescope To Hunt For Earth-Like Planets

A new telescope will take the responsibility for seeking planets resembling Earth from about 38 kilometers from the planet’s surface. The telescope will rely on special optical tech that filters out light coming from other stars that they orbit for a better view. On Tuesday morning, in New Mexico, the telescope, which was produced by UMass Lowell, was launched aboard a huge helium balloon that’s nearly as large as a football field.

They had to make such a huge balloon because the telescope is big and heavy, measuring 4.2 meters in length and 0.9 meters in width with a weight of over 680 kilograms. Dubbed PICTURE-C, the telescope will serve at the edge of the atmosphere of our Earth to get a clear view. In addition, this piece of equipment is reusable which can stay in aloft for several hours each time before it’s decoupled and return to the Earth’s surface through parachute-assisted descent.

The project is funded by NASA, through a 5-year grant worth of $5.6 million for the university. It will return next year for a follow-up trip with the aim of capturing more photos to better help their research team do the search. With the project, we can discover other objects in space, more than just planets that resemble the Earth as it’s a unique approach to look at space bodies that used to be washed out by ambient light from stars.

Under the program Exoplanet Exploration, NASA is looking for other habitable planets using space telescope, helping us answer the questions of whether or not there are other “Earths” out there.