A NASA institute has selected a new University of Colorado at Boulder proposal for further study that describes how existing technologies can be used to study planets around distant stars with the help of an orbiting "starshade."
The concept by CU-Boulder Professor Webster Cash of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy was one of 12 proposals selected for funding Sept. 28 by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. Cash's proposal details the methods needed to design and build what essentially is a giant "pinhole camera" in space.