Transformational astrophysics and exoplanet science with Habitable Worlds Observatory's High Resolution Imager
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
2025-12-19 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Abstract
Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be NASA's flagship space telescope of the 2040s, designed to search for life on other planets and to transform broad areas of astrophysics. NASA are seeking international partners, and the UK is well-placed to lead the design and construction of its imaging camera - which is likely to produce the mission's most visible public impact. Early participation in the mission would return investment to UK industry, and bring generational leadership for the UK in space science, space technology, and astrophysics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.16416,
title = {Transformational astrophysics and exoplanet science with Habitable Worlds Observatory's High Resolution Imager},
author = {Vincent Van Eylen and Richard Massey and Saeeda Awan and Jo Bartlett and Louisa Bradley and Andrei Bubutanu and Kan Chen and Andrew Coates and Mark Cropper and Ross Dobson and Fabiola Antonietta Gerosa and Emery Grahill-Bland and Leah Grant and Daisuke Kawata and Tom Kennedy and Minjae Kim and Adriana Adelina Mihailescu and Jan-Peter Muller and Georgios Nicolaou and Mathew Page and Paola Pinilla and Louisa Preston and Ted Pyne and Hamish Reid and Santiago Velez Salazar and Jason L. Sanders and Giorgio Savini and Ralph Schoenrich and George Seabroke and Alan Smith and Philip J. Smith and Nicolas Tessore and Marina Ventikos and Esa Vilenius and Francesca Waines and Silvia Zane and James Betts and Sownak Bose and Cyril Borgsom and Shaun Cole and Jessica E. Doppel and Vincent Eke and Carlos Frenk and Leo W. H. Fung and Qiuhan He and Mathilde Jauzac and Owen Jessop and Zane Deon Lentz and Gavin Leroy and Simon Morris and Yuan Ren and Jurgen Schmoll and Ray Sharples and Fionagh Thomson and Maximilian von Wietersheim-Kramsta and Kai Wang and Stephane V. Werner and Subhajit Sarkar and Jacob Kegerreis and James Kirk and Subhanjoy Mohanty and John Southworth and John Philip Stott and Ashley King and James W. Nightingale and David Rosario and Paola Tiranti and Edward Gillen and Cynthia S. K. Ho and Christopher Watson and Andrzej Fludra and Chris Pearson and Yun-Hang Cho and Yu Tao and Joanna Barstow and James Bowen and Chris Castelli and Chiaki Crews and Angaraj Duara and Mark Fox-Powell and David Hall and Carole Haswell and Kit-Hung Mark Lee and Joan Requena and Anabel Romero and Jesper Skottfelt and Konstantin Stefanov and Olivia Jones and Sean McGee and Annelies Mortier and Graham P. Smith and Amalie Stokholm and Amaury Triaud and Becky Alexis-Martin and Malcolm Bremer and Katy L. Chubb and Joshua Ford and Ben Maughan and Daniel Valentine and Hannah Wakeford and Juan Paolo Lorenzo Gerardo Barrios and Chandan Bhat and Xander Byrne and Gregory Cooke and Natalie B. Hogg and Nikku Madhusudhan and Maximilian Sommer and Sandro Tacchella and Georgios N. Vassilakis and Nicholas Walton and Mark Wyatt and Manoj Joshi and Beth Biller and Mariangela Bonavita and Trent Dupuy and Aiza Kenzhebekova and Brian P. Murphy and Vincent Okoth and Cyrielle Opitom and Larissa Palethorpe and Paul Palmer and Mia Belle Parkinson and Ken Rice and Sarah Rugheimer and Colin Snodgrass and Ben J. Sutlieff and Souradeep Bhattacharya and Emma Curtis-Lake and Jan Forbrich and Darshan Kakkad and David J. Lagattuta and Brian Ongeri Momanyi Bichang'a and Peter Scicluna and Richard Booth and Martin Barstow and Sarah Casewell and Leigh Fletcher and Anushka Sharma and Christopher J. Conselice and Suzanne Aigrain and Jayne Birkby and Claire Guimond and Carly Howett and Mei Ting Mak and Richard Palin and Chris Pattison and Richard Robinson and Samantha Youles and Andrew Collier Cameron and Justin Read and David John Armstrong and David J. A. Brown and Mikkel N. Lund and Andrew Robertson and Pierre-Olivier Lagage and Lígia F. Coelho and Preethi R. Karpoor and Enric Palle and Leen Decin and Denis Defrère and Kaustubh Hakim and Swara Ravindranath and Jason Rhodes and Marc Postman and Iain Neill Reid and Fabien Malbet and Amirnezam Amiri and Marrick Braam and Qiuhan He and Haakon Dahle and Angharad Weeks},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.16416},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
White paper submitted to the UK Space Agency's initiative "UK Space Frontiers 2035" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-space-frontiers-2035-astro-planetary-and-helio