Friday, March 4, 2016

These are the Upcoming Missions to Seek out new life, find new worlds...as profiled by the Planetary Society

Our understanding of exoplanets—or extrasolar planets (planets outside of our solar system)—has completely transformed since the discovery of the first planet orbiting a main-sequence star in 1995 (51 Pegasi b). We have learned about the existence of hot Jupiters (large gas giants orbiting extremely close their host stars with orbital periods of ~8 days) and the abundance of super-Earth/mini-Neptune sized-planets on orbits shorter than 1 year; both these types of planets seem (to date) to be absent from our solar system. Now, thanks to NASA's Kepler mission, we know that exoplanets are abundant in our Galaxy. As the field moves into the third decade, I thought I'd highlight some of the upcoming space-based exoplanets missions.

Today a suite of techniques are employed to discover exoplanets: direct detection, transit, radial velocity, microlensing, and astrometry. You can find a great primer on these methods here. The next generation of dedicated space missions are primarily focusing on finding a sample of planets for comparative planetology where we can study the composition of the interior and atmospheres of these planets and how they compare to bodies in our solar system. Many are aiming to find targets where multiple detection techniques can be used to help probe the internal structure and makeup of these worlds:

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