SCEtoAUX 413 is in. | Citation :
For most of us, today is just Thursday. For astronomers, it’s practically a holy day. Today is an event that comes only once a decade, and it’s of cosmic importance—literally. Today, a special committee has revealed the priorities for the next decade of American astronomy, like a synod giving word from on high.
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So the decadal survey recommends an observatory bigger than Hubble, which the astronomy community made a top priority in the 1970s. This new instrument, astronomers imagine, would suppress the bright light of a star and look right at the planets hidden in the glow. It would be capable of observing worlds that are 10 billion times fainter than their sun.
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If this future space telescope manages to find an Earth-like planet, it will look, at that distance, eerily familiar. We will see it as the Voyager spacecraft, on its way to the edge of the solar system, saw Earth more than 30 years ago: a fuzzy speck in the darkness, a pale blue dot, in Carl Sagan’s words.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/science [...] ns/620613/ ---------------
Above all, rating a spacecraft is more than a set of requirements, a process, or a certification. It involves a mindset, instilled by leadership, where each person feels personally responsible for their piece of the design and for the safety of the crew.
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