Charles Baltay, Nikhil Padmanabhan, David Rabinowitz and 3 undergraduate students are part of the NASA Astrophysics mission WFIRST

February 19, 2016

Yale connections: Charles Baltay (Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics), Nikhil Padmanabhan (Associate Professor of Physics), David Rabinowitz (Senior Research Scientist), Kristo Ment (YC’2017), Nathaniel Barbour (YC’2018), and Eleanor Woodward (YC’2017) are part of the NASA Astrophysics mission WFIRST.

From Jet Propulsion Laboratory News:

After years of preparatory studies, NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe – the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

With a view 100 times bigger than that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, WFIRST will aid researchers in their efforts to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, and explore the evolution of the cosmos. It also will discover new worlds outside our solar system and advance the search for worlds that could be suitable for life.

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