Habitable Worlds Observatory – UK Community Workshop 3

Habitable Worlds Observatory – UK Community Workshop 3

Wednesday and Thursday, November 19-20, 2025

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is NASA’s next flagship space astronomy mission, building on the heritage of the Hubble, Webb and Roman space telescopes. It will deploy advanced ultraviolet, optical, and infrared technologies to identify potentially habitable worlds and analyse their atmospheres for signs of life. HWO will also conduct a wide-range of observations on the cosmos, providing a significant leap in capabilities in many areas of astrophysics and planetary science. Current schedules have an expected launch in the early 2040s.

Following on from the HWO open community event in Washington D.C. this past July, we are excited to host the third UK community workshop at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, after last year’s workshop in Milton Keynes, and the previous year’s at Space Park Leicester.

The July D.C. event announced the current two concepts being developed by NASA are of the order of a 6.5m or 8m aperture telescope, respectively, both with 5 instruments slots. These two concepts will be refined before choosing a single baseline concept in 2027 to go forward to the Mission Concept Review with. It is an exciting time to get involved with instrument studies and the UK strategy going forward.

UKSA announced a call for studies for a potential UK-led instrument earlier this year, with those studies due to start this October and end in March 2026. UKSA have been a strong voice for significant UK participation in HWO, whether leading a full instrument as well as in contributing subsystems of other instruments.

NASA’s Science Cases Portal for HWO can be found via https://outerspace.stsci.edu/display/HWOCOMMUNITYSCI/HWO+Community+Science+Case+Portal. All 60 current Science Case Development Documents are linked on https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PTazkPP-gIhOEETNVDLoXp-7m-1etTRdknWWlmQrPNI/edit?gid=622123951#gid=622123951.

We hope to be able to welcome you in person, but for those who can’t travel for these dates we will have an online joining option and will host it as a hybrid event. We will be using the Higgs Centre for Innovation building which has a conference room suitable for 90 people (strict maximum capacity), so please register early. In the unlikely event that we exceed this limit, we might ask institutions to consolidate their in-person attendance to ensure as many research groups as possible are represented.

We will be working on the detailed programme in the coming weeks. The workshop will cover activities on the HWO to date, including the announcements from the July conference in Washington D.C, and HWO activities in the UK to date covering science and instrument design studies, as well as on future plans.

There is free parking available at the top of Blackford Hill, but spaces are shared with the public and are limited. We therefore strongly recommend using carpooling or taxis.

We will provide lunch and ask that anyone that has a dietary request contact the local organiser, Cassandra Mercury (cassandra.mercury@stfc.ac.uk), directly.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh on 19 November!

Please feel free to share this invitation with anyone else in the community you feel it may be of interest to.

Best wishes,

Christophe Dumas, Cassandra Mercury, and Martin Barstow