NASA awards $20 million to Arizona-led telescope project studying interstellar dust

By Erick León

Event / source date: October 6, 2026

TUCSON, Arizona — NASA has awarded $20 million to a University of Arizona team developing a small space telescope to investigate interstellar dust using ultraviolet light.

The proposed PUFFINS mission is designed to observe about 70 stars and measure how dust changes the polarization of their light, according to the university’s October 6 announcement.

The project brings together Steward Observatory, McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin and international collaborators. Researchers hope its measurements will clarify the properties of very small dust grains that influence how stars and planets form.

PUFFINS is in an early design phase with a target launch in 2030. The photograph accompanying this report is an existing Hubble view of the Horsehead Nebula, credited to NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team; it is not imagery from PUFFINS.

Source: University of Arizona; source report by Hannah Hindley and Daniel Stolte. English summary prepared by Noticias La Paz.

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