The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report

Understand

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s.

• For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission capable of discovering and characterizing Earthlike planets orbiting nearby bright sunlike stars in order to search for signs of habitability and biosignatures.
• Such a mission can also be equipped with instrumentation that will enable broad and exciting general astrophysics and planetary science not possible from current or planned facilities.
• HabEx is a space telescope with unique imaging and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to near-IR.