05 January 2026 year NASA announced, which awarded three-year, fixed-price contracts to seven companies to study the technology, which can be used for the Observatory of habitable worlds (Habitable Worlds Observatory, HWO) — a large space telescope, the launch of which is predicted in the 2040s.
Among the selected companies: Astroscale U.S., BAE Systems Space and Mission Systems, Busk, L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman та Zecoat. 6 In January of this year, during the session of the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix, the interim project manager reported, that companies will explore a wide range of technologies, important for HWO, among which mirror coating and their stability, micromotors, service approaches, evaluation of various telescope architectures and clarification of key science objectives, which will determine the final design etc. These studies are part of NASA's broader work to improve the design of the HWO, while the project is on the previous one, pre-formulation stage. At this stage, few characteristics of the observatory have been definitively determined, in particular the size of the main mirror. It is known, that, as of now, astronomers prefer a mirror with a diameter 8 meters.
The scientific leader of the project said, that HWO will be the most powerful telescope, that NASA has ever launched. The observatory will be able to detect much fainter objects, than any other space or ground-based telescope, which opens up possibilities for research from exoplanets to cosmology.
The contracts aim to significantly refine the design and key HWO technologies by the end of the 2030s, to reduce the likelihood of cost overruns and missed deadlines, similar to those, that accompanied the creation of the James Webb telescope. The results of the work should be a great success, as HWO will receive a major financial boost. In the bill, made public 05 January , allocation is provided 150 million dollars specifically for HWO, although in NASA's budget proposal on 2026 the observatory's technology development fiscal year was only requested 3,3 million dollars under the plan, which involved cutting funding for all of NASA's astrophysics program by two-thirds.
Source: https://spacenews.com