Universe Today
"This is game time for astrophysics. We want to build all these concepts, but we don’t have the budget to do all four at the same time. The point of these decadal studies is to give members of the astrophysics community the best possible information as they decide which science to do first.”
“This mission is ambitious, but finding out if there is life outside the solar system is the prize. All the technology tall poles are driven by this goal... Physical stability, plus active control on the primary mirror and an internal coronagraph (a device for blocking starlight) will result in picometer accuracy. It’s all about control.”
“To directly image a planet orbiting a nearby star, we must overcome a tremendous barrier in dynamic range: the overwhelming brightness of the star against the dim reflection of starlight off the planet, with only a tiny angle separating the two. There is no off-the-shelf solution to this problem because it is so unlike any other challenge in observational astronomy.”
“Supermassive black holes have been observed to exist much earlier in the universe than our current theories predict. We don’t understand how such massive objects formed so soon after the time when the first stars could have formed. We need an X-ray telescope to see the very first supermassive black holes, in order to provide the input for theories about how they might have formed.”
“I’m not saying it will be easy. It won’t be. These are ambitious missions, with significant technical challenges, many of which overlap and apply to all. The good news is that the groundwork is being laid now.”