What Would It Mean for Astronomers If the WFIRST Space Telescope Is Killed?
Source: Space.com
What Would It Mean for Astronomers If the WFIRST Space Telescope Is Killed?
By Calla Cofield, Space.com Senior Writer | February 13, 2018 02:00pm ET
The White House budget proposal has called for the cancellation of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a move that could be interpreted as a warning to the mission's leaders to rein in the program's expanding costs. But if the cancellation goes through, some scientists worry it could hurt the international standing of the U.S. astrophysics community.
WFIRST was tentatively scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, to become NASA's next "flagship mission," a classification applied to large-scale missions with broad science objectives. Other NASA flagship missions include the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Telescope, and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
Among its many science capabilities, WFIRST was designed to search for and study planets around other stars, and answer key questions in cosmology. That also included a focus on understanding the nature of dark energy, that mysterious force that is believed responsible for the universe's accelerating expansion. David Spergel, a physicist at Princeton university and co-chair of the WFIRST science team, wrote on Twitter about the value of WFIRST, citing some of the many questions that it could help scientists answer.
"What is driving the acceleration of the universe? What are the properties of exoplanet atmospheres? How did our galaxy and its neighbors form and evolve? What determines the architecture of exoplanets? US should be leading the world in addressing these big questions," he wrote.
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Read more: https://www.space.com/39680-wfirst-space-telescope-cancellation-scientist-reactions.html
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