In 1609 Galileo Galilei built his first optical refracting telescope. Seven years later, in 1616, Niccolo Zucchi made the first reflecting telescope. Both devices gave humans insight into a space so large that 400 years later we are still searching for answers.
New telescopes are in the works and are set to be launched this year. They could show us things that we've never seen before, such as signs of other life. Here's a quick rundown of what to expect:
The Hubble saw its first action some 19 years ago, and NASA is planning its final upgrade mission on the aging telescope. One of its new additions will be a brand spanking new spectrograph, which tells astronomers the chemical makeups of stars and whether exoplanets have atmospheres capable of sustaining life.
Source: nasa.gov
The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the pioneer space telescopes, collecting loads of new data and interesting images of our universe.
The Kepler telescope is going to launch later this year. It will look only at stars in our Milky Way galaxy, specifically their brightness. Any variation in brightening or dimming could mean a planet is crossing paths with the star. By analyzing the degree of dimness, astronomers may be able to tell whether the planet could host life.
Source: nasa.gov
The Kepler telescope will stare at stars to detect planets as they pass in front of them.
The Allen telescope is an array of radio antennae that will gather faint radio signals from space (see: Contact) in hopes of picking up some communication, which could be our first detection of intelligent life in our galaxy. It plans to target a couple hundred thousand stars near the center of the Milky Way, and to specifically focus on stars that are known to have exoplanets orbiting them.
Source: nasa.gov
An artist rendition of the space array.
The Herschel Observatory
This powerhouse of a telescope is scheduled to launch in April. With its 11-and-a-half foot wide light mirror (the largest ever deployed in space) it surpasses the Hubble in virtually every regard. It will go farther than the Hubble and use its far-reaching infrared technology to look even deeper into space.
Source: nasa.gov
This behemoth hopes to expand the boundaries of space exploration.
*Traveling with the Herschel telescope is the Planck satellite, which seeks to survey cosmic radiation from the Big Bang and help answer questions about the origin of the universe.
Perhaps the most ambitious project on the list is the Icecube, which doesn't look into space at all. Instead, it houses hundreds of light detectors that are embedded in the frozen ground of the South Pole. Icecube's goal is to detect neutrinos, which are incredibly small particles that travel at the speed of light. Considering they are so small that they can pass through ordinary matter (such as yourself at this very moment) this is no easy feat! By studying the neutrinos, however, scientists may be able to support (or debunk) string theory- the most recent and "popular" of new scientific theories- which claims that there could be more dimensions to the universe than the typical three (or four) initially imagined.
Source: lbl.gov
The Icecube structure's creators hope to learn more about neutrinos, and by extension, string theory.
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