Astronomers say new telescopes should take advantage of “Starship paradigm”

This slide from a presentation by Lee Feinberg, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, shows concepts for a space telescope fitting inside the volumes of a SpaceX Starship rocket and a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket. (credit: NASA/Lee Feinberg)

A consensus among leading American astronomers is that NASA's next wave of great observatories should take advantage of game-changing lift capabilities offered by giant new rockets like SpaceX's Starship.

Launching a follow-on to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Starship, for example, could unshackle the mission from onerous mass and volume constraints, which typically drive up complexity and cost, a panel of three astronomers recently told the National Academies' Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"The availability of greater mass and volume capability, at lower cost, enlarges the design space," said Charles Lawrence, the chief scientist for astronomy and physics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We want to take advantage of that.”

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