Giant Magellan Telescope 

Cynthia and George and the Mitchell Foundation have contributed gifts and pledges exceeding $33 million to the Giant Magellan Telescope to establish Texas A&M University as a founding partner of a consortium to develop and build the state-of-the-art next-generation telescope, the heir apparent to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. 

The Giant Magellan Telescope is made possible by an international consortium of thirteen leading universities and science institutions representing five countries. The consortium includes Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard University, the Australian National University, Astronomy Australia Limited, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, The Smithsonian Institution, the Sao Paulo Research Foundation, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and the University of Chicago.

Set to open sometime in 2029, with a cost of well over $1 billion, the Giant Magellan Telescope will be ten times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope and have four times the imaging resolution of the James Webb Space Telescope. The Giant Magellan Telescope will open new avenues of scientific exploration, including understanding the origin and evolution of planetary systems; witnessing the formation of stars, galaxies, and black holes; and exploring the properties of dark matter and dark energy in the cosmos.