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/ International News / 2008 / February 2008 / February 22, 2008 New study to aim for detection of Earth-like planets in distant solar systems |
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NASA has awarded the University of Colorado at Boulder a sum of one million dollars to lead the study of a space observatory to find Earth-like planets in distant solar systems and open the search for finding extraterrestrial life.
Washington, Feb 22 : NASA has awarded the University of Colorado at Boulder a sum of one million dollars to lead the study of a space observatory to find Earth-like planets in distant solar systems and open the search for finding extraterrestrial life.
The CU-Boulder planetary proposal, called the New Worlds Observer, was one of 19 proposals for major new observatories in the coming decade selected for further study.
According to Professor Webster Cash, chief scientist on the effort, "The New Worlds Observer proposal features a giant, daisy-shaped plastic "starshade" to block starlight and allow a telescope to image the faint light from distant planets circling other stars."
"Astronomers will, for the first time, be able to identify planetary features like oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks and even detect biomarkers like methane, oxygen and water if they exist," he added.
The 4-meter telescope planned for the project will be larger and more powerful than the 2.4-meter mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing researchers to record the light from rocky planets tens of trillions of miles away.
"The telescope and its 50-yard-diameter starshade would launch into an orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth, with the parasol unfurling and moving via thrusters into the lines of sight of nearby stars thought to harbor planets," said Cash.
According to Cash, "New World Observer is a clean win for us because we got full funding and high ratings from NASA."
"This puts us on firm footing to compete with the other mission concepts for the right to build the next major observatory in space," he said.
The estimated cost to design and build the New Worlds Observer mission would be roughly 3.3 billion dollars.
ANI
