Vera C. Rubin Observatory: Chief Scientist Tony Tyson Says the Legacy Survey of Space and Time Will Map 37 Billion Objects by 2036 and Guarantees It Will Discover Something That Revolutionizes Astronomy
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially begun its Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a 10-year mission to map the entire southern sky many times over. Located on a mountaintop in Chile, the observatory’s car-sized LSST Camera; the world’s largest digital camera at 3,200 megapixels, began operations on June 30, 2026. livescience
Every night for a decade, the camera captures 30-second exposures of the southern sky, one after another, building a continuously updated mosaic of the universe. Within two minutes of each exposure, the system processes all data, compares it to the archival record, and issues public alerts to any detected changes; from supernovae and gamma-ray bursts to colliding galaxies and tumbling asteroids. Between 7 and 8 million such events are detected every single night.
By the end of the survey in 2036, the observatory expects to have catalogued approximately 37 billion objects, generating enough data for every astronomer on Earth to work with simultaneously. Chief Scientist Tony Tyson told Live Science the survey “is more than a hope, it’s a guarantee” that something unexpected and revolutionary will be discovered, potentially in the still-unknown category of faint, non-repeating cosmic explosions observed by Japanese researchers.
The single greatest threat to the survey is not technical; it is corporate. Ultra-bright low-Earth-orbit satellites and proposed orbital AI computing stations would make the sky too bright for the LSST to function effectively. Tyson is working with Congress, the UN, and the FCC to address it. The universe is ready to reveal itself. The question is whether we’ll let it.
Check out our previous coverage of space and astronomy on The Trusted Times.
