Lazuli, a Billionaire-Funded Private Space Telescope, Signals a New Strategy for Astronomy

"Announced today at a special session of the American Astronomical Society's (AAS's) annual winter meeting, the Lazuli Space Observatory is a project of Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic organization built by investor Wendy Schmidt and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This is the first full-scale observatory that is privately funded in space, says Stuart Feldman, an astronomer, computer scientist and president of Schmidt Sciences, who spoke to Scientific American before the announcement."

"As envisioned, the telescope will boast a three-meter mirrorlarger than that of NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Its three instrumentsa planet-finding coronagraph, a high-resolution wide-field camera and a light-splitting spectrographwill study the atmospheres of distant worlds, dissect the light from exploding stars and tackle mysteries such as the nature of dark energy, the enigmatic force that drives the universe's accelerating expansion."

"Lazuli will be agile as well; it will be able to rapidly swivel to stare at things that go bump in the cosmic night. With a price tag rumored to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the telescope could launch before the decade is out. And if it is successful, the feat could signal a new way to achieve big things in the space sciences."

The Lazuli Space Observatory is a privately funded full-scale space telescope backed by Schmidt Sciences, founded by Wendy and Eric Schmidt. The telescope will feature a three-meter mirror, larger than Hubble's, and carry three instruments: a planet-finding coronagraph, a high-resolution wide-field camera, and a light-splitting spectrograph. Those instruments will enable studies of exoplanet atmospheres, spectroscopy of exploding stars, observation of transient events, and investigations into dark energy. The observatory will have rapid-slew agility to quickly target transient phenomena. Its cost is rumored in the hundreds of millions, with potential launch before the decade's end.

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