The question “are we alone” remains unanswered, but humanity may get a hint of it in the coming years as technologies are tested and launched aboard several next-generation space telescopes in the coming years and decades. 

Lockheed Martin, along with several other companies with strong Colorado ties, have been tapped by NASA to develop technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Topics like space exploration and crewed spaceflight are front and center at the 41st Space Symposium, with space science and exploration dominating parts of Monday’s sessions.

The annual Space Symposium, the six-day event at The Broadmoor, is the largest gathering of commercial, military and governmental figures in space technology in the world.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory, billed as a next-generation space observatory, will be able to directly image planets in distant solar systems, and help scientists learn whether they can or cannot support life as we know it, according to multiple subject matter experts from NASA private companies who were attending Symposium. 

Lockheed Martin is no stranger to deep space exploration and has contributed to the mission success of the James Webb Space Telescope and 11 of NASA’s 22 total Mars missions. 

To find habitable worlds, though, is another challenge entirely, said Alison Nordt, Lockheed Martin Space’s director of space sciences and instrumentation. 

“The brightness of the planet to the brightness of the star is about one in 10 billion,” Nordt said Monday, the first full day of Symposium events. “It’s the brightness of a firefly next to a thousand stadium floodlights in Palo Alto from right here, separated by about a millimeter.” 

NASA has found more than 6,000 planets orbiting other stars, but never an Earth-like planet.

While a telescope like the James Webb Space Telescope is gazing far back into cosmic history, it is not nearly precise enough to find and image an Earth-like planet, if one is to be found. 

During a space science track, Giada Arney, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center shared what the first image from the Habitable Worlds Observatory might look like. Rather than the sharp and bright images produced by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, the rendering showed dark smudges. 

These represent what NASA thinks our solar system may look like from 33 light years away, as they attempt to think like aliens. The dot representing Earth was barely visible, with Venus — one of the brightest objects in the sky — relatively visible. 

“From these pale points of light, we are going to be looking for signs of habitability and life,” Arney said. “So the question is how do you detect life from across interstellar distances? Well it’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to measure the spectra of Earth-like planets.” 

This means they will be measuring the emission spectrum of a star’s light as a planet completes its orbit. Based on how the spectrum changes, with certain elements blocking certain wavelengths of light based on a planet’s potential atmosphere, scientists can deduce what the atmosphere looks like.  

In order to get good data, however, the spacecraft has to be incredibly stable, said Lockheed’s Nordt. In fact, it will have to be 100 times more stable than James Webb, with variances measured by single atoms. 

Lockheed is up to the task, Nordt said, but mentioned it will take years of technological development and demonstration. The telescope likely won’t launch for at least a decade and a half, according to various sources. In the meantime, Lockheed and NASA will continue to learn from the Hubble and Webb telescopes and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, slated to launch this year 

“When we launch Habitable Worlds, and when it is successful in identifying a planet with bio-signatures that we believe are robust and show life, we want to take a picture of the planet, not just have a dot,” Nordt said.