Newly Announced Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Funded by Breakthrough Initiative

Newly Announced Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Funded by Breakthrough Initiative

Move over, James Webb: humanity is about to get another eye in the sky. There’s just been a new space telescope announced, named TOLIMAN, and it’s already got funding from the Breakthrough project.

The telescope is designed around two things: its target, and the exotic optics the telescope will use. TOLIMAN’s mission is to point directly at the Alpha Centauri system, in order to search for potentially habitable exoplanets there. The system actually contains three stars; Proxima Centauri (inside the red circle above) is confirmed to host a rocky planet in its Goldilocks zone, and there are likely several other planets elsewhere in the system.

Newly Announced Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Funded by Breakthrough Initiative

The name TOLIMAN stands for “Telescope for Orbit Locus Interferometric Monitoring of our Astronomical Neighbourhood.” Clunky, we know. But the acronym was chosen in homage to the space telescope’s target star system. Toliman is the official name of a star within the Alpha Centauri system: α Centauri B, the smaller and cooler of the binary pair around which Proxima Centauri orbits.

The 30-cm telescope is surprisingly small, for a space telescope, but its target is Earth’s nearest neighboring star system: Alpha Centauri. Alpha Cen is the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus, visible in the southern sky, and it’s about 4.3 light-years from Earth.

Newly Announced Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Funded by Breakthrough Initiative

The system was first documented by Arabic astronomers during the Golden Age of Islam. The word “Toliman” itself is the Latinized version of an ancient Arabic name for Alpha Centauri, which meant “the Ostriches.” But two other stars in the Southern sky already bore that name, so to bring the name of the new star into accord with the constellation in which it was found, it was later renamed Rijl al-Qinṭūrus. This in turn was Latinized to Rijel Kentaurus, “the Centaur’s foot,” which is where TOLIMAN is going to point.

TOLIMAN’s exotic optics are its other keystone feature. The telescope will use a “diffraction pupil lens” for its observations. Multiple overlaid structural patterns are arranged on the surface of the lens, so that the different areas separate incident light by its phase.

Newly Announced Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Funded by Breakthrough Initiative

Because of this ability to distinguish separate sources, this design lends itself very well to studying Alpha Cen in particular. The system’s binary pair are only about 23 AU apart — about the distance from the Sun to Uranus. That means they have very little angular separation between them. Even so, the two stars can be clearly distinguished by the diffraction pupil design, because where they might overlap visually, using this lens means that different light sources stand out from one another in an obvious, kaleidoscopic way:

Newly Announced Exoplanet-Hunting Space Telescope Funded by Breakthrough Initiative

The international collaboration is led by Peter Tuthill of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, and it includes teams from the University of Sydney, Breakthrough Initiatives, Saber Astronautics, and NASA’s JPL. Jason Held, CEO of Saber Astronautics, described TOLIMAN in a press release as “an exciting, bleeding-edge space telescope,” one that will be “supplied by an exceptional international collaboration. It will be a joy to fly this bird.”

Continue reading

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Is Leaking into Space
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Is Leaking into Space

NASA reports the probe grabbed so much regolith from the asteroid that it's leaking out of the collector. The team is now working to determine how best to keep the precious cargo from escaping.

SpaceX Launches ‘Better Than Nothing’ Starlink Beta
SpaceX Launches ‘Better Than Nothing’ Starlink Beta

Those lucky few who have gotten invitations to try the service will have to pay a hefty up-front cost, and the speeds aren't amazing. Still, it's a new generation of satellite internet.

NASA Created a Collection of Spooky Space Sounds for Halloween
NASA Created a Collection of Spooky Space Sounds for Halloween

NASA's latest data release turns signals from beyond Earth into spooky sounds that are sure to send a chill up your spine.

Space Mining Gets 400 Percent Boost From Bacteria, ISS Experiments Show
Space Mining Gets 400 Percent Boost From Bacteria, ISS Experiments Show

We'll need lots of raw materials to sustain human endeavors on other planets, and a new project on the International Space Station demonstrates how we can make space mining over 400 percent more efficient.