The first privately funded space-based telescope is in the works

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, could assistance marque past with a caller task unveiled connected Wednesday, the Lazuli Space Observatory. As reported by Science, the scope was announced astatine a gathering of the American Astronomical Society this week and could beryllium the largest privately funded abstraction scope successful past acknowledgment to investments from the Schmidts.

Lazuli's plan features a 3.1-meter mirror, which would marque it larger than NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (but smaller than the James Webb Space Telescope). It volition besides beryllium equipped with a wide-field camera, a broadband integral-field spectrograph, and a coronagraph. Those one …

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