![]() ![]() Transit studies are the current best method for learning the components of an exoplanet’s atmosphere. Only the interplay of such substances can reliably inform astronomers about the actual presence of life, instead of its mere potential. ![]() ![]() And even if water is present - is life?Īnswering this question means moving beyond a planet’s size and peering deep into its gas shroud to find the telltale signs of a living atmosphere: water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone. Yet astronomers cannot ascertain whether water is actually present. These planets are the right size to have rocky surfaces, and they orbit in the habitable zone of their star where liquid water could potentially exist. Astronomers know of a handful of planets already where life could be present. “And the answer to that lies along finding intelligence, finding life, and finding planets on which this life could exist.” “I think all of humankind is interested in our place in the galaxy, in life, in the universe,” Borucki says. It should be no surprise that some of the leading exoplanet researchers - among them Seager and Bill Borucki, who designed and headed Kepler - describe their motivations along these lines. Even now, scientists have directly observed a handful of specific molecules that comprise a planet’s atmosphere in only a few dozen systems, and those are the brightest, hottest giant planets that hold no hope of life.įar from being clinically detached, many astronomers dream of finding another Earth. Determining a planet’s composition from this information is an exercise in intelligent guesswork, modeling, and puzzle solving. They know a planet’s mass or its size - they know both only in serendipitous cases - and the distance between it and the star it orbits. In 2009, the Kepler spacecraft opened the floodgates, and hundreds and then thousands of exoplanets poured onto the scene.īut astronomers know only the slimmest of details for most of these planets. Over the next decade, searches from both the ground and space revealed a handful more, then dozens. In 1995, exoplanets catapulted from science fiction to cutting-edge science when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first one orbiting a solar-type star. From this pristine vantage point, it will peer into the farthest reaches of the cosmos and hunt the holy grail of astronomy: another living Earth. It will command an uninterrupted and unclouded view of the heavens, far from Earth’s atmosphere or its photobombing bulk. And while earthbound telescopes will have advanced to 30 meters by HDST’s era, the space telescope will, like JWST before it, fly not just in space, but at the distant L2 Lagrange point, well beyond the moon’s orbit. JWST’s 6.5-meter mirror already dwarfs Hubble’s comparatively modest 2.4 meters, but HDST will span about 12 meters, matching the largest telescopes currently on Earth. ![]() While JWST will focus specifically on the infrared portion of the spectrum, HDST will be a true Hubble successor, with capabilities in the infrared, optical, and ultraviolet. So, balanced between technologies within reach and the most pressing astrophysics questions of the day, the basics are already apparent to Seager and her fellow visionaries. “You have your science drivers and your engineering constraints, and you try to find a happy medium among all of those.” She was also a co-chair for the committee tasked by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) to define a vision for HDST. “There’s not a million ways to do it,” says Sara Seager, astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since the moment Hubble left the launchpad, different groups have discussed what this future project might look like, but they all agree on the basic requirements and objectives. So it should come as no surprise that, while it won’t fly until at least the mid-2030s, astronomers are already planning the next next large space observatory, currently known as the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST). In fact, they have already begun.Ĭonceiving of, researching, and building science’s biggest, most valuable tools of inquiry - the Large Hadron Collider, or the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes - requires dozens of years, hundreds of expert panels and team meetings, and billions of dollars, and the gears that march these projects through the bureaucratic assembly line turn slowly. In 2018, when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) opens its enormous eye on the universe and begins collecting data, the astronomers who envisioned it and the engineers who designed and built it will celebrate and cheer.īut even as the first waves of data beam down to Earth, another team of scientists will be hard at work designing its replacement. ![]()
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