In a major milestone for a decades-long project, the Giant Magellan Telescope project recently passed its final design review, locking in the design for the telescope enclosure and paving the way for ...

There has long been a limiting factor in the development of space-based telescopes — launch fairings. These capsules essentially limit the overall size of the mirrors we are able to launch into space, ...

Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life. To find the answer, astronomers will ...

The detailed design for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) developed by a U.S.-Canadian team is capable of delivering on the full promise of its enormous light-collecting area, according to the findings ...

Engineers designing the Giant Magellan Telescope celebrated the feat of having their innovative seismic protection design validated by an independent review panel. This group of experts in seismic ...

GREENBELT, Md. – The tennis court-sized sunshield built by Northrop Grumman for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has completed its preliminary design review at the company’s Space Technology facility ...

When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched Christmas Day in 2021, it was the culmination of over two decades of planning and construction and countless manhours to ensure everything went to ...

When the Giant Magellan Telescope is operational in the late 2020s, it will produce images that are 10 times greater than Hubble Space Telescope and four times the James Webb Space Telescope. But ...

It is possible that human beings are only a decade away from finding out whether or not it is alone in the Universe, and the University is playing a large role in this potential discovery. A group of ...

The fate of telescopes in space is looking better now that they are being designed to be serviceable. Researchers developed a servicing plan that can be applied to future space observatories based on ...