Habitable Worlds Observatory – UK community workshop 2

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) has been selected by NASA as its next flagship space astronomy mission, following on from Hubble, Webb and Roman telescopes. A principal scientific goal of HWO is to search for Earth-like planets in nearby interstellar space (within a few 10s of parsecs) and characterise their surfaces and/or atmospheres through direct spectroscopic observations in the search for evidence of life processes. HWO will also be a general-purpose observatory able to provide revolutionary capability in many areas of astrophysics and planetary science. As with Hubble and Webb before, the timescale for development, build and launch of HWO is measured in decades, with an expected launch in the early 2040s (although it is hoped to accelerate work to bring this forward). HWO is currently planned to be a 6-m aperture UVOIR telescope. Detailed design of the mission, examination of its science goals and development of instrumentation has begun, with science and technology working groups already formed and key meetings on-going.

NASA began an exercise at the end of 2023 (START/GOMAP) to consider science cases that will drive the instrument and telescope requirements for the mission. This is continuing with international involvement and will conclude towards the end of this year. However, a big surprise has been that the US Congress have already created a budget line for HWO, much earlier than expected, and instructed NASA to open a project office. This office is now up and running and has taken over the management of the science case working groups. This can only increase the momentum of the project. In parallel, several meetings have been held between UKSA and NASA and we have hosted visits to the UK from NASA Science Director Nicky Fox and Astrophysics Director Mark Clampin. The outcome of these is a strong desire by all parties for UKSA to have a major role in the mission.

Facilitated by a small grant from STFC, a UK community workshop was held in November last year at Space Park Leicester. With the above developments, it is timely to follow this up with a second workshop, will be held at the Open University Campus in Milton Keynes on Thursday 21 November.

Please register to attend the workshop using the following EventBrite link.

We hope that most people will join in person, but plan to make the event available as a hybrid meeting. We have a large capacity (50-100) depending on room availability, so please register early. In the unlikely event that we exceed the limit, we might ask institutions to consolidate their in-person attendance to ensure as many research groups as possible are represented.

We will be working on the detailed programme in the coming weeks. In general, we will cover background to HWO, and UK activities to date, but mostly we want to develop a discussion across the community. We will welcome short contributions on either science, instrument or industry interests. A key topic will be to consider what instrument contribution the UK could make. Please email the local organiser Jesper Skottfelt directly ([email protected]) if you would like to provide one of these. However, please note that we will have a limited number of slots and would encourage coordination of institutional input to avoid too many requests.

Free parking is available for everyone at the Open University main reception (Berrill building).

A range of meat, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free lunch options will be provided. Anyone with additional special dietary needs (e.g. nut and other allergies) should contact Jesper Skottfelt directly (deadline 10/11).

We are looking forward to seeing you at the Open University on the 21st November.

Best wishes,

Martin Barstow and Jesper Skottfelt

Host or Publisher Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics, The Open University