It looks like the folks over at NASA are about to roll up their sleeves and work on a brand new telescope which could help us hunt down any other life forms out there, as well as stand a chance to check out any possible mysteries that the universe carries during the ride. This telescope will be known as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), where it will boast of capabilities that would certainly put the Hubble to shame. Basically, it is as though one would take a panoramic lens and install it over Hubble – with this wide-field instrument being able to cover 100 times the Hubble’s field of view.
Not only that, the WFIRST will also be equipped with a coronagraph which will block the glare from individual stars so that it can better characterize the planets orbiting those stars, in addition to the atmospheres of planets, too. Nikole Lewis of the Space Telescope Science Institute shared, “It will also develop technology that will pave the way for finding and characterizing Earth-like planets in the future.”
NASA has hopes that WFIRST will be able to discover additional thousands of exoplanets, deriving those from the crowded central region of the Milky Way galaxy alone. As for the little green men out there, it looks like there is still some waiting time to go.