Thanks to the "money rain" NASA will begin to create a new space observatory ahead of schedule

Thanks to the generous funding provided by the US Congress, NASA can easily start implementing all of its major projects. One of them is the creation of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) space observatory . It was decided to speed up the work on the creation of this telescope, so we can expect the start of the WFIRST project this year instead of 2017, as was previously planned.

NASA's WFIRST division received $ 90 million instead of the $ 16 million requested by the agency for this year. A 2.4-meter telescope mirror can provide surveillance for approximately 400 million galaxies and 2600 exoplanets. The duration of the main WFIRST mission is about 6 years.

Poll of astronomersNASA conducted in 2010 showed that most scientists consider this project a priority. According to experts, the new telescope will provide answers to many questions that concern astronomers in our time. It is probably true that even more questions will arise - but this has always been and probably will be.

By the way, the mirror size of the new telescope is almost equal to the diameter of the Hubble telescope mirror. But this is a wide-angle panoramic infrared telescope, so its "field of view" is 100 times wider than that of Hubble. This means that the observatory will be able to track more objects in less time than the Hubble. Using accurate methods and tools for determining the distance to such objects, astronomers will be able to understand, in particular, how dark energy changes over time.

In addition, scientists expect the discovery of thousands of new exoplanets. In addition to the usual instrumentation, the telescope will be equipped with a special coronograph, a tool that uses a disk to block light from stars, which will make it possible to detect exoplanets more often than before. Perhaps the tool will allow you to even get images and study the spectrum of exoplanets. In addition to the coronograph, the telescope will be equipped with a 288-megapixel focal-plane grating and a thermal imager.