NASA reveals four options for its future flagship telescope

NASA's next flagship telescope is the James Webb spacecraft, but the long-term direction of NASA's research remains uncertain. America's space agency has now turned to a team of expert astronomers to choose its eventual successor which will be built and sent into space in the 2030s. Four vastly different designs have been put forward which are designed to look for alien life, distant Earth-like worlds, black holes and the birth of new galaxies and high-energy gas disks. All four of the proposed missions look vastly different and the momentous decision will likely sculpt NASA's research for decades to come. Analysis of The Great Observatory programme in the 1970s gave the scientific community, and the wider world at large, access to analysis of the entire spectrum of electromagnetic light from Gamma rays to infrared radiation. LUVOIR will continue a mission similar to that which has been covered over the last two decades by Hubble and will study the first stars of the universe to find signs of life and the creation of worlds.