Are we alone?
Absent evidence for aliens popping up in ancient rocks on Mars or the seawater from some icy ocean moon, the best hope for answering that profound question may lie in a project called the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). That's the official name for a next-generation NASA space telescope meant to soar aloft in the late 2030s or early 2040s to look for signs of life on Earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars akin to our sun.
But HWO's path to the launchpad is long and labyrinthian, littered with obstacles and pitfalls that could individually or collectively scuttle the mission. That hasn't dimmed the enthusiasm of multiple generations of space scientists working on HWO or planning for its eventual flood of data, many of whom gathered for an important conference this summer about the telescope and its science.
Our top story details some of the conference's proceedings, and discusses what seems to be the greatest challenge HWO faces: a gloomy, ever-shifting political climate in which the long-term planning required for any decade-spanning project becomes very difficult, if not almost impossible.
Do you have thoughts or questions about the story? Let me know via e-mail (lbillings@sciam.com), Twitter or Bluesky.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.
—Lee Billings
