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NASA awards L3Harris role in mission to detect signs of life on distant planets
NASA awards L3Harris role in mission to detect signs of life on distant planets
Listen to this articleL3Harris Technologies has secured a contract from NASA to develop critical technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a next-generation space telescope designed to search for signs of life on distant planets.
L3Harris is one of seven companies selected for three-year, fixed-price contracts supporting the ambitious mission, which is expected to become one of NASA’s flagship deep space observatories. The work will be performed in Rochester and will focus on advancing thermal and optical stability technologies essential to the telescope’s performance.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory will be built specifically to detect and study potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system. To accomplish that goal, the telescope must maintain extraordinary precision—down to the picometer level, a unit of measurement smaller than an atom.
Even the slightest temperature-induced movement can interfere with the telescope’s ability to capture faint light from distant worlds and identify chemical signatures associated with habitability, including water vapor, molecular oxygen, ozone and methane.
L3Harris will build on thermal control technologies it previously developed for the optical telescope assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is scheduled to become NASA’s next flagship astrophysics observatory following the James Webb Space Telescope.
“Achieving unprecedented stability in space represents one of the most demanding engineering challenges ever attempted,” said Charles Clarkson, vice president and general manager of Space Superiority & Imaging at L3Harris.
Clarkson said the company’s experience supporting landmark missions, including the James Webb and Roman space telescopes, positions it to help NASA push the boundaries of advanced optics and space systems.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory represents one of the agency’s most ambitious scientific endeavors, aiming to conduct extraordinarily precise spectral measurements of planets located light-years from Earth to determine whether they could support life.
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