NASA is working on a new telescope and hopes to raise some funding from governments and private donations for a solar gravitational lens (SGL) that would send back multipixel images of possible habitable planets.
NASA said the SGL lens has remarkable properties: a brightness amplification of up to a factor of ~1e11 (at 1 um) and extreme angular resolution (~1e-10 arcsec). In non-science talk, that means it could send back direct high-resolution images and spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets.
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program is a visionary aerospace program designed to nurture the creative ideas and possible breakthroughs of innovators, scientists, and entrepreneurs. The video below is an overview of the NIAC program and the future of exploration.
SGL is part of the project and has received Phase I and Phase II funding from the NIAC. So far, the study has made three innovations:
- They’ve proven the feasibility of high-res, multipixel imaging of a habitable exoplanet
- Devised a special “swarm” architecture for small satellites (smallsats) to explore space
- Designed a low-cost solar array propulsion system, which would allow the exit velocity needed to leave our solar system.
The SGL would be designed to study the solar neighborhood over a six-month time frame and send back resolution photos of around 25 km-scale surface resolution. The images would be reconstructed and show “surface features and signs of habitability.”
During Phase II they determined that majority of the fundemental technology needed for the SGL already exists, due to current commercial small satellite programs and the proliferation of government.
The latest news released by NASA on the SGL mission gives an overview of the design costs for investors:
1) It cuts the cost of each participant by enabling multiple entities broad choices of funding, building, deploying, operating, analyzing system elements at their choice. 2) It delivers economy of scale in an open architecture designed for mass production to minimize recurring costs. 3) It drives down the total mass (and thereby both NRE/ recurring costs) by using smallsats. 4) It uses realistic-sized solar sails (~16 vanes of 10^3 m^2) to achieve the needed high velocity at perihelion (~150 km/sec). 5) It applies maturing AI technologies for virtually autonomous mission execution eliminating the need for operator-intensive mission management, (6) It reduces launch costs by relying on “ride-share” opportunities to launch the smallsats, avoiding the costs of large dedicated launchers.
The proposal for Phase III will include advancing the understanding of the SGL-based imaging and spectroscopy of the exoplanet candidates and set up a possible affordable flight test mission to prove the concept will work.
The NASA article goes on to explain Phase III:
We will refine our understanding of the mission architecture with [an] emphasis on the issues of thermal and stability control during the perihelion acceleration. We will employ the system engineering approach successfully applied to many space missions by JPL and Aerospace, and employed by our industry partners, to select the best technologies for long-duration, autonomous operations in deep space and to identify and mitigate mission risks.
