NASA has officially selected the far-infrared telescope "PRIMA" — and JAXA is apparently joining too

A far-infrared space telescope I've personally been keeping an eye on for a long time is finally getting off the ground. On September 23, NASA reportedly selected the next-generation telescope "PRIMA" as the first mission in its newly created "Probe Explorers" mission class. The decision came after a comparison with the X-ray telescope "AXIS," and the mission aims for a 2033 launch followed by five years of observations. The cost cap is said to be $1.2 billion (excluding launch costs).

What makes the far infrared so interesting is that it lets you see through the dust-shrouded regions where stars and planets are being born. Besides studying how planets form and how galaxies and supermassive black holes have grown over time, PRIMA will reportedly measure the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (the D/H ratio) in comet water to tackle the question of "where did Earth's water come from?" No matter how many times I hear that question, it never fails to excite me.

The telescope has a 1.8 m aperture. It will be cooled to about 4.5 K so that its own heat doesn't become noise, and it will carry the spectrometer "FIRESS" and the imaging and polarimetry instrument "PRIMAger." It will neatly fill the wavelength gap between JWST and the ALMA telescope, and 75% of its observing time will reportedly be open to proposals from researchers around the world.

From Japan, JAXA is expected to join as an international partner, and options under consideration reportedly include providing thermal insulation technology developed for the once-planned infrared telescope "SPICA" and supporting data reception at the Misasa Deep Space Station. Seeing SPICA's technology live on in this way honestly warms my heart a little.

Source: TECH+ (Mynavi News)