Phase 1 funding soon to be secured

These telescopes will give us much better information on world in our solar system including exoplanets nearby

LUVOIR will search for habitable conditions and signs of life on dozens of potentially habitable worlds beyond our Solar System. The results of this search will bring a wealth of data on the atmospheric composition and surface conditions of rocky planets in the habitable zones of a variety of stars. These data will revolutionize our understanding of planet-scale habitability, and will allow the first assessments of the frequency with which global biospheres arise on habitable worlds. Confident life-detection requires access to a wide range of molecules, which demands direct spectra with broad wavelength coverage from the near-UV to the near-infrared. The LUVOIR telescope and starlight suppression system can span these wavelengths and access the important constituents of planetary atmospheres, including water, molecular oxygen, ozone, carbon dioxide, and methane.

@acelaken: When we look at the Solar System, it seems delicately balanced to produce a living world. How do we understand the Solar System in the broader context of planetary systems? By studying in detail the wide diversity of exoplanets, we will be able to develop, test, and refine theories of planetary atmospheric processes, including escape, greenhouse, and photochemical effects, under a range of conditions. Our understanding of how planetary surface temperature, climate, and atmospheric structure are influenced by a combination of incident solar flux, cloud and haze physics, and atmospheric composition has thus been profoundly informed by comparative planetary studies. LUVOIR will have the ability to characterize hundreds of transiting and directly imaged planets and will revolutionize our understanding of all classes of extrasolar planets and the common threads that connect them.

@acelaken: There are many things still to be discovered and understood about the bodies within the Solar System. LUVOIR can provide up to about 25 km imaging resolution in visible light for Jupiter, permitting detailed monitoring of atmospheric dynamics in Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune over long timescales. Sensitive, high resolution imaging and spectroscopy of Solar System comets, asteroids, moons, and Kuiper Belt objects that will not be visited by spacecraft in the foreseeable future can provide vital information on the processes that formed the Solar System ages ago. The search for life also takes place closer to home. Over the last decades, we have discovered that several moons of the outer Solar System - like Europa and Enceladus - have liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. LUVOIR has an important role to play by determining the currently unknown strength and frequency of this geysers of Europa and Enceladus, through high resolution monitoring of icy moons.

@acelaken: unfortunately luvoir launches mid 2030s may be within our time horizon for much better detail of worlds