Related papers: Habitable Planet Detection and Characterization wi…
The search for life on exoplanets is one of the grand scientific challenges of our time. The strategy to date has been to find (e.g., through transit surveys like Kepler) Earth-like exoplanets in their stars habitable zone, then use…
High-contrast imaging observations of large angular diameter stars enable complementary science questions to be addressed compared to the baseline goals of proposed missions like the Terrestrial Planet Finder-Coronagraph, New World's…
In the next decades, the astrobiological community will debate whether the first observations of oxygen in an exoplanet$'$s atmosphere signifies life, so it is critical to establish procedures now for collection and interpretation of such…
We demonstrate that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can detect infrared (IR) excess from the blended light spectral energy distribution of spatially unresolved terrestrial exoplanets orbiting nearby white dwarfs. We find that JWST is…
The current explosion in detection and characterization of thousands of extrasolar planets from the Kepler mission, the Hubble Space Telescope, and large ground-based telescopes opens a new era in searches for Earth-analog exoplanets with…
NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to achieve starlight suppression to the $10^{-10}$ level for the detection and spectral characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. Broadband ozone absorption features are key biosignatures that…
Detecting exoplanets and other faint sources of emitted and reflected light near a bright star requires deeply suppressing the starlight while efficiently transmitting the dim light from its surroundings. This suppression can be carried out…
Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…
Exoplanet emission spectra are often modelled assuming that the hemisphere observed is well represented by a horizontally homogenised atmosphere. However this approximation will likely fail for planets with a large temperature contrast in…
In the coming years and decades, advanced space- and ground-based observatories will allow an unprecedented opportunity to probe the atmospheres and surfaces of potentially habitable exoplanets for signatures of life. Life on Earth, through…
Spectroscopic observations are extremely important for determining the composition, structure, and surface gravity of exoplanetary atmospheres. High resolution spectroscopy of the planet itself has only been demonstrated a handful of times.…
The near-term capability to characterize terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres may bring us closer to discovering alien life through atmospheric data. However, remotely detectable candidate biosignature gases are subject to false positive…
Soil assessment is important for mobile robot planning and navigation on natural and planetary environments. Terramechanic characteristics can be inferred from the thermal behaviour of soils under the influence of sunlight using remote…
The direct observation of cold and temperate planets within 1 to 10 AU would be extremely valuable for uncovering their atmospheric compositions but remains a formidable challenge with current astronomical methods. Ground-based optical…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is the first NASA Astrophysics flagship mission with a key science goal of searching for signs of life on rocky habitable exoplanets beyond our solar system. The Living Worlds Community Working Group…
Some atmospheric gases have been proposed as counter indicators to the presence of life on an exoplanet if remotely detectable at sufficient abundance (i.e., antibiosignatures), informing the search for biosignatures and potentially…
Detection of life on other planets requires identification of biosignatures, i.e., observable planetary properties that robustly indicate the presence of a biosphere. One of the most widely accepted biosignatures for an Earth-like planet is…
The high-contrast coronagraph for direct imaging earth-like exoplanet at the visible needs a contrast of 10^(-10) at a small angular separation of 4 lambda/D or less. Here we report our recent laboratory experiment that is close to the…
Transmission spectroscopy with ground-based, high-resolution instruments provides key insight into the composition of exoplanetary atmospheres. Molecules such as water and carbon monoxide have been unambiguously identified in hot gas giants…
Atmospheric characterization of Earth-like exoplanets through reflected light spectroscopy is a key goal for upcoming direct imaging missions. A critical challenge in this endeavor is the accurate determination of planetary mass, which may…