'Swiss-army knife' telescope tops astronomers' wish list

A $1.6 billion that would study dark energy, hunt for Earth-like planets, and scrutinise stars and galaxies should be NASA's top space telescope priority in the coming decade, an expert panel says.

The recommendation comes from the US National Research Council. Every ten years, US science agencies task the organisation with canvassing the astronomical community and identifying the top research priorities. The final report of this decadal survey is the distillation of two years of work, 17 town hall meetings, and 324 papers submitted on future science opportunities.

The space mission that ranked highest is a telescope called Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a 1.5-metre probe that would launch in 2020 and orbit a stable gravitational point about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.

Like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will be sent to the same spot in 2014, WFIRST would be sensitive to infrared light. But the telescope would have a wider field of view, allowing it to take in large patches of the sky.

It would study dark energy, which seems to make up more than 70 per cent of the combined matter and energy of the universe and is causing the expansion of space to speed up; survey the galaxy's exoplanets; and work as a general-purpose instrument to investigate topics such as the structure of the Milky Way. "It's one set of hardware that can do three sets of observing jobs," says Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona in Tucson, one of the committee's vice-chairs.

via 'Swiss-army knife' telescope tops astronomers' wish list - space - 13 August 2010 - New Scientist.