It's basically a giant flower flying through space to block some of the stars light...
Studying deep space is hard. Not only is everything extremely far away, but when a scientist is trying to study one specific object in the vast void of the universe, other things can get in the way—things like stars, which are crucial to all known existence, but have a brightness that can be distracting.
That's why engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are working on what they call a"starshade," which could block the light from stars outside the solar system to further research. It's all still hypothetical; no starshade has ever flown in space. The idea is ambitious, and would involve not one but two spacecraft: the space telescope and the starshade itself.
The idea of a starshade was first proposed in the halcyon days of the Space Race in the 1960s, when they were considered for studying exoplanets, or planets outside of the solar system. Hundreds of exoplanets have been discovered since then, often using natural star-blocking techniques. The transit method, for example, relies on when planetary orbits place exoplanets in between the telescope and their stars., a telescope with a 2.
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