This Foldable Telescope Can Search For Signs Of Life In Space

Astronomers of NASA are having the idea of making a giant foldable telescope to find new exoplanets.

The proposed telescope will be called HabEx, short for The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory. It features a mirror measuring four meters in width, nearly doubles that of the Hubble Space Telescope, which is 2.4 meters wide.

The extra width enables the HabEx to look at a greater distance to find Earth-like planets, the first step in determining whether they can nurture life, and later, human settlements.

What makes HabEx so special is its sail measuring 52 meters in width. This helps the telescope filters light emitting from distant stars. That light is what keeps astronomers from seeing what is orbiting around. What the sail does is to filter the stars out by standing right up ahead to have a clearer image of the area.

The sail will unfold itself after the satellite has gone into orbit, placing the starshade at the distance of 77,000 kilometers from the telescope. With this sail in place, light from the stars will be blocked but the reflected light coming from other planets can still go through.

What the telescope does next is to search for signs of exoplanets that have carbon dioxide or water from stars that have similar attributes to the Sun.

HabEx is just one of the four proposed plans of NASA so there is no guarantee that it will make it to reality. However, if it is chosen to get the funding, HabEx will be built in 2021 and launched some time in the 2030s.

The other proposed plans are also for hunting exoplanets. But since their costs are far greater than that of HabEx, we have reason to believe that the foldable telescope will be the chosen one.