A rich starry sky fills the view from an ancient gas-giant planet in the core of the globular star cluster M4, as imagined in this artist's concept. The 13-billion-year-old planet orbits a helium white-dwarf star and the millisecond pulsar B1620-26, seen at lower left. Credit: NASA and G. Bacon (STScI)

“It’s not too early,” NASA Astrophysics Division Director Paul Hertz said of the timeline for the studies. “We need to identify some missions for after WFIRST in order to start making technology investments.”

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Jeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews. He earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science...