Imaging Surface of Exoplanets With 25 Kilometer Moon Crater Hypertelescopes

Hypertelescope capable of direct high-resolution imaging with a high limiting magnitude have been built and tested on Earth. The Hypertelescope group have proposed giant telescopes 10-25 kilometers across in lunar impact craters. Many small mirrors can be dilutely arrayed in a lunar impact crater spanning 10 to 25km. The light from two Keck telescopes were …

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Interstellar Meteor Expert Avi Loeb Says Unmanned Alien Space Probes Likely Vastly Outnumbers Manned

Avi Loeb discusses his expectation that unmanned alien space probes would vastly outnumber manned alien spaceships. This is certainly the case for the human space program where we have sent out about one hundred manned missions but have sent tens of thousands of unmanned missions over seventy years. In an interview, Avi explained that it …

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Finding All Earth-Like Exoplanets Orbiting Sun-Like Stars Within 30 Light Years

A new NASA NIAC phase 1 study is analyzing a 20-meter class infrared space telescope. It is currently impossible to find Earth-like planets in the habitable zones (where the temperature supports liquid water) of Sun-like stars. It is even harder to measure the composition of their atmospheres. But this is necessary if we want to …

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Breakthrough for Finding Asteroids and Tracking Space Debris

The current Transastra Sutter ground telescope test model, comprising four telescopes, moved in early April to the Winer Observatory, where over two months it tracked multiple small, dark, fast-moving objects by collecting about 50 extended images every night built from over 6,000 exposures taken over an eight-hour period. They will launch a cubesat in 2023 …

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Quantum Error Correction Will Enable Quantum Telescopes

Researchers from Australia and Singapore are working on a new quantum technique that could enhance optical VLBI. It’s known as Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP), which allows quantum information to be transferred without losses. When imprinted into a quantum error correction code, this technique could allow for VLBI observations into previously inaccessible wavelengths. Once integrated …

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Space Based Starshades Will Make Large Ground Telescopes the Most Powerful Exoplanet Finders

Hybrid observatories will combine a 100 meter diameter starshade in space with a telescope on the ground. The Hybrid Observatory for Earth-like Exoplanets (HOEE) would convert the largest ground-based telescopes now under construction (Giant Magellan Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, and Extremely Large Telescope) into the most powerful planet finders yet designed. No other proposed equipment …

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Proposed First Gravity Lens Mission by 2028 that Could Spot Large Islands on Exoplanets by 2050

A meter-class telescope with a coronagraph to block solar light, placed in the strong interference region of the solar gravitational lens (SGL), is capable of imaging an exoplanet at a distance of up to 30 parsecs with a few 10 km-scale resolution on its surface. The picture shows results of a simulation of the effects …

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Millions of Telescopes 4 Light Days From Earth Could Permanently Explore Other Solar Systems

If we send telescopes out to 4 light days we can use the gravity of the sun to amplify the power of telescopes by 100 billion times. Although we can build larger telescopes with higher resolution than exists today near to Earth, the telescopes that are sent out to gravitational lensing regions would resolve much …

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