The ultraviolet universe is invisible from Earth’s surface, and most of what we see comes from a single orbiting observatory which will retire in only a couple of years.
The Hubble Space Telescope stays in good health and will last until the 2030s, but it surely is regularly being dragged back into Earth’s atmosphere. No spacecraft has been capable of visit Hubble since 2009, two years before NASA retired its space shuttle fleet. There are early-stage plans to refurbish Hubble again, possibly using a SpaceX Dragon vehicle. But within the meantime, Hubble’s eventual retirement could leave behind a giant gap.
Hubble’s sharp eyes include ultraviolet vision. Earth’s atmosphere blocks most ultraviolet light, so it takes an area telescope to actually bring into view the young, hot stars that astronomers want to have a look at via those wavelengths — or growing black holes, or explosions in deep space. (There are other ultraviolet telescopes on spacecraft now, but they have a tendency to be on limited missions that don’t span the scope of the universe as Hubble does.)
So the time is now, a team of 100 astronomers argues, to fund a brand new telescope to fly in 2029 with ultraviolet capabilities on board. The design is prepared. The international and industrial partners are lined up. But what is required is a commitment from the Canadian government to fund the following stages of the CASTOR telescope, which was deemed the highest priority by the Canadian astronomy community in its last planning report, issued in December 2020.
“Hubble is sort of 30 years old. It has been a tremendous workhorse, but it surely’s not going to last perpetually,” said CASTOR lead team member Sarah Gallagher, the president of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CACSA) and an astrophysicist at Ontario’s Western University.
“We’re really in an attractive position,” Gallagher told Space.com, “based on the entire work that we have done, and selecting to tailor the necessities in order that it really suits this area of interest. That is really exciting, scientifically.”
CASTOR stands for Cosmological Advanced Survey Telescope for Optical and UV Research. The planned 3-foot-wide (1 meter) observatory is an element of a brand new generation of telescopes that pack loads of functionality right into a small package. It could only cost something like $350 million USD ($480 million CAD) — roughly comparable to Hubble’s average yearly cost, absent the five space shuttle servicing missions. (Hubble’s mission has cost a complete of about $16 billion USD in constant dollars since its development began in 1977, in keeping with NASA figures updated last month.)
Canadian astronomers would love to steer the Earth-orbiting telescope, slated to fly about 500 miles (800 kilometers) high — double the altitude of the International Space Station (ISS). Canada would contribute roughly 60% of the fee ($300 million CAD), with the balance coming from international partners. Big Canadian firms or branch corporations like Honeywell, ABB, and Magellan are ready to begin work when asked to achieve this. The UK Space Agency, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and space authorities in France, Spain, Israel all wish to contribute, with launch pad possibilities in India or South Korea.
However the funding decision is currently before Canada’s Parliament, which is formulating the country’s 2024 budget for release within the spring. A pre-budget submission from August from CASTOR’s team argues that the mission would “solidify Canada’s global leadership in astronomy” and permit the nation to ultimately lead a global astronomy project for the primary time, after its a long time of research and contributions to other major efforts. It’s a giant research team, too: representatives from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Canada’s National Research Council, the Canadian Astronomical Society and plenty of universities are on board in that country alone.
Canada, incidentally, is understood for making smart space bets with limited tax dollars in a rustic hosting just 40 million people. The Canadarm robotic arm series has bought the nation astronaut seats since 1984; in 2023 alone, that commitment brought a promise to send CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen to the moon on NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, together with funding backup CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons. Fellow CSA astronaut Josh Kutryk will even fly to the International Space Station in 2025.
Related: Canada soars into space with recent moon and ISS astronaut missions
A flurry of other space announcements got here this yr, too. There are guarantees to update Canada’s launching rules to support business rocket efforts. Canada also gave a funded commitment to increase and renew the longstanding Radarsat Earth statement series crucial for military and climate change observations. It even pledged a brand new “lunar utility vehicle” to support Artemis program moon astronauts, while continuing to fund a mini-rover that will launch in 2026. (The rover’s science team is led by fellow Western University professor Gordon Osinski, who teaches geology to NASA and CSA astronauts on the regular, with some spaceflyers coming with him on expeditions to foreign places here on Earth.)
While CASTOR has a smaller mirror than Hubble, the detector will take a look at much wider swaths of the sky in each optical and ultraviolet light. Seeing a lot of the sky without delay in ultraviolet, for instance, will allow astronomers to deal with parts of the universe that change quickly: “Often those are very exciting things, like things exploding. We love cosmic explosions,” Gallagher said. Detecting such outbursts quickly could allow powerful ground instruments just like the gravitational wave-seeking LIGO to follow up on the finds.
Studying ultraviolet wavelengths at a large scale, furthermore, makes CASTOR complementary to 2 other wide-field missions astronomers are working on. The European Space Agency‘s Euclid telescope launched in July to deep space, and is already providing images in optical and near-infrared light. And, in 2027, NASA‘s infrared-seeking Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will follow Euclid to Lagrange Point 2. That is a gravitationally stable orbit 1,000,000 miles (1.5 million km) away from us at the alternative side of the sun.
Gallagher says if all three telescopes could work together in real time, before Euclid’s prime mission expires in 2029, that will be ideal — although CASTOR could at all times follow up on Euclid’s work after the actual fact if needed.
“What’s so beautiful about having CASTOR, plus Euclid, plus Roman, is all of them have deal with different parts, different colours, and so having all three of them together makes all of them higher, since you get so far more information,” she said. The ultraviolet view would offer extra information on the populations of galaxies (old versus young stars), or the sources of quasars which are powered by black holes.
“What I’m thinking about, particularly, is these objects that change over time,” Gallagher continued. “So in case you return, and also you revisit them over and yet again to see them get barely brighter … you’ll be able to take a look at how that changes as a function of color. And that may inform you concerning the whole structure of the system that is feeding the black hole.”
Phase 0, the mission evaluation and identification phase for the telescope, was accomplished in July, and the CASTOR team has been busy gathering support for his or her budget submission. Quite a few Members of Parliament have been consulted. Letters of support got here in from 13 different university vice presidents of research, together with the Canadian Association of Physicists. Gallagher herself met with representatives across Canada on the annual Space Borne conference this fall, which unites much of the scientific, government and industrial communities, to proceed the funding discussions.
“This can be a project that has been well-researched. A number of the technology risk has been retired. The science case is just so exciting. That is why we have been capable of get these partners on board,” Gallagher said. But she acknowledged that securing funding for it will not be guaranteed.
“Everybody we talked to, truthfully, is pretty enthusiastic about it. However it’s a tricky budget cycle, and we realize there’s plenty of essential priorities as well. But I believe this really is the kind of thing wherein Canada could be a leader on an exciting, world-class mission. The potential for training and provoking the following generation in all different fields is actually unbelievable.”