This artist’s concept shows the geometry of a space telescope aligned with a starshade, a technology used to block starlight in order to reveal the presence of planets orbiting that star. From tens of thousands of kilometers away, the starshade and the telescope must achieve and maintain perfect alignment to enable direct exoplanet imaging, but will require sufficient development in advance if it is to be implemented as part of a final architecture. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Astronomy’s bright future revealed in game-changing Astro2020 decadal report

Big dreams and big telescopes are back at last, but everything depends on sufficiently funding NASA, the NSF, and the DOE.

Published in

Starts With A Bang!

11 min readNov 12, 2021

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Every ten years or so, the National Academies conducts a decadal survey, where after soliciting recommendations and white papers…

Ethan Siegel

Written by Ethan Siegel

Editor for

Starts With A Bang!

The Universe is: Expanding, cooling, and dark. It starts with a bang! #Cosmology Science writer, astrophysicist, science communicator & NASA columnist.

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