Work is currently underway on the first privately funded space telescope

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, could help make history with a new project unveiled Wednesday, the Lazuli Space Observatory. As reported sciencesthe telescope was announced at a meeting American Astronomical Society This week it could be the largest privately funded space telescope in history thanks to investments from the Schmidt family.

The Lazuli design features a 3.1 meter long mirror, making it larger than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (But it’s smaller than the James Webb Space Telescope.) It will also be equipped with a wide-field camera, a wide-field integrated spectrograph, and a coronagraph. These instruments will be used to study everything from exoplanets to supernovas, but Schmidt Sciences also envisions using lazuli for “rapid response” purposes, such as rapidly rotating to collect data on objects observed by other telescopes.

Lazuli is part of Schmidt Observatory Systemwhich also includes three ground-based observatories: the Argus Array, the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA), and the Large Fiber Array Spectroscopic Telescope (LFAST). According to the Schmidt Sciences Foundation, the telescope system is “underpinned by a commitment to open science: data and software will be shared widely by default.” Scientists from all over the world, at any career level, will be able to use the telescopes and access the data collected with them. The four reactors, including Lazuli, could be operational before the end of the decade.