Monday

The Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) is one of four major mission concept studies that has been commissioned by the NASA Astrophysics Division in preparation for the next Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey that is being undertaken by the US National Research Council. The goal is to have multiple mission concepts, each with downscope and upgrade options available, at a sufficient level of maturity that the Decadal Committee will be able to recommend at least one of these as a new start in the 2020s. LUVOIR is intended to be a true successor to the Hubble Space Telescope in terms of wavelength coverage (100 - 2500 nm) and instrumentation suite of imagers and spectrographs, and because it is intended to be both serviceable and upgradable, even though it will operate Sun-Earth L2. Like Hubble, LUVOIR is intended to carry out a broad range of astrophysical investigations from Solar System objects to the most distant galaxies. LUVOIR will for the first time enable direct spectroscopy of a statistically meaningful sample of exoplanets in the habitable zone around nearby stars to search for biosignatures. There are two potential architectures under study, both built around deployable segmented primary mirrors with James Webb Space Telescope heritage: LUVOIR-A is an on-axis 15-m telescope that will require an SLS Block 2 launch vehicle. LUVOIR-B is an off-axis 9-m telescope that can be launched by a number of launch vehicles that are currently under development.