NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — When a boy named Elliott found an alien in the classic 1982 film "E.T." it offered easy answer to the question on every astronomer's mind: Are we alone in the universe? In reality, however, scientists have yet to solve that query.
That could soon change, thanks to a new NASA flagship telescope being designed to seek out strange new worlds that could support life as we know it. Called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, the telescope is so massive it may even need to ride a next-gen megarocket like SpaceX's Starship to reach space; it will also require new technological innovations to hunt for Earth's twin across the light-years. Yet, even with such hefty demands, this project was tapped as a top priority for NASA in the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 (Astro2020), an influential report that aims to set a roadmap for the astronomy community within the decade following its release.
