NASA Wants to Build a 'Starshade' to Hunt Alien Planets (original) (raw)

Starshade exoplanet-hunting missions may be technologically daunting, but they're not beyond NASA's reach, recent research suggests.

Such a mission would employ a space telescope and a separate craft flying about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) ahead of it. This latter probe would be equipped with a large, flat, petaled shade designed to block starlight, potentially allowing the telescope to directly image orbiting alien worlds as small as Earth that would otherwise be lost in the glare.

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