The University of Arizona's Steward Observatory is competing for two NASA grants to launch a telescope into near-Earth orbit and lift one into the stratosphere by balloon.
NASA will consider funding the multimillion-dollar projects, EXCEDE and GUSSTO, as part of its 2013 Explorer Mission program.
EXCEDE, the Exoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer, is a space telescope scientists hope will unravel mysteries of planetary system formation.
If selected for an Explorer mission, the project would receive $200 million for development from NASA.
"We know there are a lot of stars with planets around them; maybe there are one or two where life could potentially form," said UA astronomer George Rieke, co-investigator for EXCEDE.
The EXCEDE satellite will use UA-designed optics and imaging equipment to give investigators clear images of planets located close to distant suns.
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Rieke said this has been difficult for astronomers in the past because light from the stars blots out closely orbiting planets.
"It's the combination of making the image perfect and then getting rid of the light of the star that makes our instrument unique," Rieke said.
One of the goals of the EXCEDE satellite will be to look for planets in a habitable zone where liquid water could theoretically be present.
Researchers plan to put the EXCEDE satellite and its 20-inch-diameter telescope in orbit 1,000 miles above the surface of the Earth. NASA gave the team $600,000 to improve the satellite's instrumentation to make it ready for the space environment.
If it's selected in 2013, Rieke said EXCEDE will observe circumstellar disks of about 350 nearby exoplanetary systems.
The second proposed mission, GUSSTO, will use an long-duration balloon to lift a 1-meter telescope 120,000 feet into the air, above most of the water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere.
That will allow clear, infrared images of interstellar dust and gas clouds where stars are born.
Astronomy professor and GUSSTO principal investigator Chris Walker said these clouds are typically up to 100 light-years across, the largest single objects scientists have found in space. The closest one is some 450 light-years away.
The clouds form suns and planets and everything in them.
"The reality is that every atom in your body came from these gas clouds," Walker said. "How these gas clouds are formed and what their life cycles are like is not very well known."
Walker said GUSSTO's design allows the telescope to stay afloat for up to 100 days, instead of a few weeks.
"Usually it takes about two years of work to analyze data taken from a two-week-long balloon trip," he said. With GUSSTO, we can gather 100 days of data in a single trip, giving us a lot more to work with."
Walker said there are advantages to using high-altitude balloons.
"For a space mission, you are limited to an instrument that weighs a couple of hundred pounds and only takes a few watts of power," he said. "With a balloon payload, you can take something that weighs 2,000 pounds and has 2 kilowatts of power."
GUSSTO, an acronym formed from a string of technical terms, survived the first round of competition and snared $250,000 for an 11-month implementation study. It will compete for a $55 million grant in 2013.
Will Ferguson is a NASA Space Grant intern. Email: ferguson@azstarnet.com
