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Rectangle-shaped mega telescope could spot Earth-like alien worlds in just 3 years
A rectangular, mid-infrared telescope is likely the most direct route yet to finding nearby blue dots and life on them.
Starshade concepts, placing a second spacecraft tens of thousands of miles in front of a telescope to create a tiny artificial eclipse, would need two launches and vast quantities of fuel to slew between targets. The concept has been modeled against designs such as the notional Diffractive Interfero Coronagraph Exoplanet Resolver (DICER) and JWST to illustrate feasibility with a space-based platform at mid-infrared wavelengths. A rectangular, mid-infrared telescope could offer the most direct, technically feasible route yet to imaging nearby blue dots, and to answering whether life like ours exists just a few dozen light-years away.
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