From the Big Bang to Biosignatures: A Flagship Observatory in NASA’s Future

LUVOIR is a concept for a highly capable, multi-wavelength observatory with ambitious science goals and is one of NASA's future flagship space observatories.

NASA has begun four concept studies of major space observatories that could launch sometime in the coming couple decades. One of these is the Large UV/optical/IR (LUVOIR) Surveyor.

LUVOIR is a concept for a highly capable, multi-wavelength observatory with ambitious science goals. This mission would enable a major leap forward in a broad range of astrophysics, from the era of galaxy formation and evolution, to star and planet formation. LUVOIR also has the exciting goal of characterizing a wide range of exoplanets, including those that might be habitable - or even inhabited.

Join Tony Darnell, Alberto Conti, and Harley Thronson as they discuss this concept with Drs. John O’Meara (St. Michael’s College) and Debra Fischer (Yale University).

Future in Space Hangouts are endorsed by the American Astronomical Society and the American Astronautical Society.

[narrator]

Things look and sound wonderful Tony, sound is very balanced across all of the guests and yourself. The new form for guest switching is way better then it used to be when it seemed to switch if a guest breathed to hard near their mic. Glad to see this channels many improvements over the last few years.

[Jenab]

An L2 mission would make a nice astronaut patch to sew on a flight suit. It's a way to tell everybody that you went further from Earth than the Apollo astronauts did.

[Jenab]

@46:52-47:00. The Coma-Sculptor cloud has member galaxies (e.g. NGC 147 and 185) not much further from us than the Andromeda galaxy. It has other galaxies farther away, such as IC342 at 13 million light years and NGC 6946 at 22 million light years. Get Dr. O'Meara to specify which galaxy in the cloud he's talking about.