This artist’s conception reveals the absolutely unfolded James Webb Space Telescope in house. Credit: Adriana Manrique Gutierrez, NASA Animator
The James Webb Space Telescope is taking exoplanet studies to the next level, helping us characterize the atmospheres of Earth-sized alien worlds for the first time. By utilizing transit techniques and spectroscopy, Webb will study planetary atmospheres to search for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe.
In the “Exploring Alien Worlds with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope” series, Research Space Scientist Dr. Giada Arney from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center introduces Webb’s scientific capabilities as they relate to the field of astrobiology and our search for life in the universe.
In this series, we’ll touch on Webb’s exploration of the TRAPPIST-1 system (a planetary system of seven rocky exoplanets), its search for atmospheric biosignatures (scientific evidence of past or present life), and the techniques Webb will use in its quest to #UnfoldTheUniverse.
Video Transcript:
Dr. Giada Arney: NASA missions like Kepler, and likewise Tess, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite have actually revolutionized our understanding of exoplanet demographics.
They’ve instructed us some primary, but in addition actually vital planetary properties like: planets sizes, how far-off these planets are from their stars, how frequent planets of various sorts are.
But we need to take the following step now and know extra about these planets, simply as distant level sources, however as precise locations, akin to the worlds of our Solar System.
So James Webb goes to assist us to take that subsequent step by really characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets.
It’s going to have the ability to measure the composition of those atmospheres, and we’ve already been in a position to do that a bit of bit for the biggest Jupiter-sized, “puffy” exoplanets with large atmospheres.
But we haven’t been able to do this for small planets about the size of Earth and with thin atmospheres.
So we really need a powerful and capable mission like James Webb to be able to make those really sensitive measurements to tell us what Earth-size exoplanets are truly like.
