WFIRST Artist's Concept

WFIRST, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, is shown here in an artist's rendering. It will carry a Wide Field Instrument to provide astronomers with Hubble-quality images covering large swaths of the sky, and enabling several studies of cosmic evolution. Its Coronagraph Instrument will directly image exoplanets similar to those in our own solar system and make detailed measurements of the chemical makeup of their atmospheres.

WFIRST is managed at Goddard, with participation by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, also in Pasadena, and a science team comprised of members from U.S. research institutions across the country.

The mission is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will manage the mission's 7.8-foot (2.4-meter) telescope and deliver the coronagraph, an instrument to help image and characterize planets around other stars. The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena will share science center activities with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, under Goddard leadership

For more information about NASA's WFIRST mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/wfirst.