NASA will launch a space telescope that will provide the largest picture of our universe ever seen, with the same depth and clarity as the Hubble Space Telescope.
-It has been named as Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope or WFIRST.
-NASA has planned to launch this telescope in the mid-2020s.
-This next generation telescope will function as Hubble’s wide-eyed cousin.
-While just as sensitive as Hubble’s cameras, WFIRST’s 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument will image a sky area 100 times larger. This means a single WFIRST image will hold the equivalent detail of 100 pictures from Hubble.
-According to the US space agency NASA a picture from Hubble is a nice poster on the wall, while a WFIRST image will cover the entire wall of your house.
-The mission’s wide field of view will allow it to generate never-before-seen big pictures of the universe, which will help astronomers explore some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos, including why the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating.
-One possible explanation for this speed-up is dark energy, an unexplained pressure that currently makes up 68 percent of the total content of the cosmos and may have been changing over the history of the universe.
-Another possibility is that this apparent cosmic acceleration points to the breakdown of Einstein’s general theory of relativity across large swaths of the universe.
-WFIRST will have the power to test both of these ideas.
