Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy Schmidt, have committed private funding to four ambitious telescope projects that together could reshape modern astronomy. Announced this week, the initiative spans three ground-based observatories and one space telescope, Lazuli, designed to deliver Hubble-like observations using newer technology. The projects will be coordinated by Schmidt Sciences, with an emphasis on faster development timelines and open access to data for scientists worldwide.
Why Eric Schmidt is turning to private funding
Eric Schmidt has been candid about his frustration with the long timelines of publicly funded observatories, which can take decades to move from proposal to launch. By backing these telescopes privately, Schmidt and his wife aim to shorten development schedules and move more quickly from concept to operation. Private funding also allows the projects to take on technical risks that government agencies often avoid, while still maintaining high engineering standards. The approach echoes an earlier era of astronomy, when privately funded observatories played a key role in advancing the field.
Lazuli: A modern successor to Hubble
At the centre of the effort is Lazuli, a space-based optical telescope designed as a modern successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. With a larger mirror and updated instruments, Lazuli is expected to capture sharper images and collect more light than Hubble, allowing astronomers to study fainter and more distant objects. Its planned higher orbit is intended to reduce interference from Earth-orbiting satellites and provide longer, uninterrupted observing windows. Scientists involved in the project say Lazuli draws on decades of advances in optics, detectors and spacecraft systems, while maintaining the broad scientific versatility that made Hubble one of the most productive observatories in history.
Three ground-based observatories
Alongside Lazuli, the programme includes three large ground-based telescope systems built around modular designs. Instead of relying on a single massive mirror, these observatories combine many smaller instruments working together as coordinated arrays. This approach allows them to cover wide areas of the sky rapidly and to track changes over time, such as supernovae, fast radio bursts and near-Earth objects. Advances in computing, data storage and artificial intelligence are central to these projects, enabling them to process enormous volumes of data in near real time and to identify events that warrant closer study.
Open science as a guiding principle
All four telescopes will operate under an open-data model, with observations made freely available to the global scientific community. Observation time will not be sold, and research proposals will be selected through open competition. Project leaders argue that this approach maximises scientific return by allowing researchers worldwide to access the data, test new ideas and build on each other’s work. For Schmidt, the open model is rooted in a broader belief that shared infrastructure and transparency are essential for accelerating discovery and ensuring that publicly useful science benefits as many people as possible.
