NASA has selected seven industry partners to develop critical technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a flagship space telescope designed to directly image Earth-like planets and search their atmospheres for signs of life. The three-year contracts went to Astroscale U.S., BAE Systems, Busek Co., L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Zecoat.
The HWO aims to identify and study 25 potentially habitable worlds, using spectroscopy to detect biosignatures like oxygen and methane in their atmospheres. It will be NASA's first mission capable of directly imaging Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars—something no current telescope can achieve.
The technical challenges are immense: the telescope must maintain optical stability to within the width of an atom, and its coronagraph must be thousands of times more capable than any space coronagraph ever built. NASA is evaluating designs with either a six-meter or eight-meter primary mirror.
"Humanity is waiting for the breakthroughs this mission is capable of achieving," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. The telescope is projected to launch in the 2040s and will be designed for in-space servicing to extend its operational lifetime.