With the James Webb space telescope still hurtling towards its destination and NASA basking in the
glow of what so far has been an almost perfect journey it's still not too early to look ahead
for Webb's eventual successor after all it took decades to plan engineer and finally get Webb
and its wondrous gold-plated mirror into space so as the scientific world is just beginning
to unwrap the incredible gift to humanity that is Webb and preparing for the mid-2020s launch
of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope let's take a look at what may come next just a hint
it's spectacular welcome to Factnomenal in today's video we unveil NASA's concept for the
most advanced astronomical observatory in human history its remarkable mission and likely timeline
buckle up as we peer into the future at the next generation of technical marvels
in 2016 as web was still being developed and tested nasa began study of four concepts for
its next flagship mission of which three heavily focused on exponentially expanding humanity's
knowledge of habitable worlds one of these has captured the imaginations of astronomers
and scientists the world over introducing the large ultraviolet optical infrared surveyor
also known as Luvoir this is nasa's most ambitious concept for a space observatory to succeed web
with a multi-wavelength upgradable space facility that like web will orbit at Lagrange point 2 or l2
currently two designs are on the drawing board blue var a with a 15 meter or 49-foot mirror
and Luvoir b featuring an 8 meter or 26-foot mirror the louvre team
jokingly refers to them as large and really large versions of the design
for perspective house 6 times the size of Hubble's mirror and over twice as large as webs
picture a ferris wheel that's Luvoir a whose mirror is the maximum size able to fit even folded
inside the next generation of heavy lift rockets make no mistake the Luvoir science and technology
definition team is building on the marvelous advances made by webs developers including using
the space origami design of segmented mirrors that unfold and deploy in space and its purpose
yes astronomers have confirmed the existence of almost 5 000 exoplanets so what do we really know
about them we know that some are bigger than others and that some are hotter than others
some are gas giants like Jupiter and some are small and rocky worlds more like mars
we have pretty good ideas of radius mass and density of sun yeah we know very little one
researcher referred to these exoplanets as small black shadows just knowing they exist is a great
start but most have been detected by astronomers through indirect means such as studying the
effects of their passing between their star's disk and earth so no direct observation and
precious little to tell us what they're made of what kind of atmosphere if any they possess
and most importantly if they are capable of sustaining life as we conceive it to be
Luvoir tends to change that in a hurry its focus will be earth-like worlds observing
to see how common the conditions that exist on our home are in the universe
and much more we cannot even anticipate think about how different planets within our own solar
system are from each other as many a scientist has said before we don't know what we don't know
what we do know is that our knowledge of planets outside our solar system will grow leaps and
bounds as aki roberge astronomer and the study scientist for the Luvoir decadal survey mission
concept study says success in this endeavor would be the birth of a brand new field of comparative
astrobiology so how Luvoir if completed determine whether other worlds can sustain life
get ready for the eclipse coronagraph even with the incredibly large mirror design of Luvoir a
the issue of getting optimal views of exoplanets with their nearby stars glare to contend with
doesn't go away but it does with eclipse the extreme coronagraph for living planetary
systems works somewhat like our moon does when it eclipses the sun blocking the overwhelming
glare and allowing spectacular views of solar flares an advanced version of this technology
is being flown into space first on board the roman telescope mission for a demonstration
once the blinding light is blocked an imaging camera can determine which worlds are rocky and
which are gaseous then the spectrograph goes to work identifying elements such as molecular oxygen
ozone carbon dioxide water vapor and methane do these sound familiar in an important way Luvoir
is more of a successor to hubble than to webb or roman like hubble and unlike the more recent two
Luvoir will take in a broader array of wavelengths from ultraviolet and visible light to the infrared
thus its unique ability to look for the molecular building blocks of life and indicators of
biological processes john o'mear chief scientist of the keck observatory and member of the Luvoir
concept team says what we are trying to do with Luvoir is create an observatory that can tell the
story of the universe from its earliest formation to the widespread presence or absence of life
extrapolating what astronomers know from data gathered by NASA's Kepler survey mission combined
with Luvoir's capabilities the study team predicts the observatory may identify and study 54 worlds
like earth over a five-year period that's not to mention many hundreds of larger and different
planets you could think a long time and not come up with a more ambitious goal for astronomers
the reality is however that not everyone in the political process will be enamored with searching
for other worlds capable of sustaining life for this reason instrumentation proposed for Luvoir
is flexible and very significantly plays well with others astronomers will be able to see our solar
system neighbors in ways previously impossible without sending a spacecraft there icy moons
on fringe outer planets may even be monitored for geysers of water erupting from their frozen
surfaces and beyond our cosmic backyard Luvoir will expand our knowledge of even the remotest
and dimmest galaxies light years beyond what we know today with its capability for unprecedented
observations of faint spectra from the early days after the big bang astronomers will be able
to identify where specific galaxies are in the cosmological evolutionary process add to that the
ability to see imprints of dark matter and it's no wonder why astronomers even with web racing 2l2
and roman inching closer to launch are excited about the next generation of space telescopes
waiting to go up by the way when can we dare hope to see this mission off the ground and into space
the proposed launch date is in the mid-2030s so what do you think about Luvoir and humanity's
possible next step towards perhaps the most important question space exploration seeks to
answer whether we are alone in the universe will policymakers see it in the same light
as the scientific world tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching Factnomenal