The Search for Other Earths: An Engineering Perspective

Earth-sized planets are likely common in the Universe, including in our cosmic neighborhood. The highest national priority is to build a space telescope to discover such planets and assess their habitability. This telescope, known as the Habitable Worlds Observatory, is expected to launch in the 2040s. This endeavor is technically challenging, and requires unprecedented levels of optical sensing and control, nearly perfect photon detection, and sophisticated image processing. I will discuss these challenges, many of which have close analogues in electrical engineering, and how they are being tackled. I will highlight some of my group’s work in developing noiseless infrared sensor arrays and aligning segmented telescopes to a few nanometers of surface error using phase reconstruction. I will give some perspective on the decades of engineering progress that has led to this point, and why the coming two decades represent a uniquely promising era for the search for life beyond Earth.

Speaker: Michael Bottom, UC Berkeley