LUVOIR Telescope

[Flyaway]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1166095545544450048

It’s here! The #LUVOIR Final Report represents 3.5 years of work by a broad group of scientists, engineers, technologists, and managers. Find it at asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/luvoir/. We’ll be tweeting out a highlight from each chapter.

Baseline launch vehicle us not surprisingly SLS but final report includes:

10.2 Alternate launch vehicles

LUVOIR has been designed to the SLS vehicle to demonstrate an observatory and spacecraft design that closes. However, the future landscape for launch vehicles should provide more options with the advent of commercial launch vehicles.

10.2.1 SpaceX Starship

The SpaceX Starship is a launch vehicle in the preliminary design phase. As such, there are not yet many details publicly available. However, the LUVOIR Team has communicated with representatives from SpaceX and performed a preliminary assessment of the compati-bility of LUVOIR with Starship.

SpaceX has indicated that the Starship will be able to lift as much as 150,000 kgs to SEL2. This incredible capacity is enabled by launching that mass first into low earth orbit and then refueling a booster for transfer to other orbits. The final fairing dimensions are still being determined but SpaceX did conduct a preliminary analysis of a fairing whose shape was altered to fit LUVOIR-A (based on this study’s final concept models) and they reported that it was a viable option. Without modification, LUVOIR-B can fit into the currently plannedStarship fairing with room to spare as shown in Figure 10-9.

Figure 10-9 is the figure at beginning of this thread. Caption says:

LUVOIR-B shown inside the nom-inal starship fairing. With small changes to the fairing, LUVOIR-A will also fit inside the SpaceXStarship. Credit: SpaceX.

 

[Archibald]

Brace yourself for the next generation of space observatories beyond JWST and WFIRST (if those two do not collapse).

ATLAST, LUVOIR, and some others are just terrific projects.