Video on December 22, the Telescope James Webb flies away from Kourou, Guyana. Among its missions: the search for biosignatures in the atmosphere of the exoplanets.
Can James Webb telescope find traces of life in the universe? One of its missions consists in any case to study the atmosphere of exoplanets, planets that turn around other stars as our sun. The hope of NASA and ESA is to find biosignatures that could tell us more about what is happening on the surface of these worlds.
Fleuron of spatial astronomy, the telescope flew on December 22 of Kourou, Guyana, after many delays. It will be placed in orbit around the sun at 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth. Built in the United States under the direction of NASA and incorporating instruments from European and Canadian space agencies (CSA), it is considered the successor of the Hubble telescope, launched in 1990.
In addition to the study of the exoplanets, it must explore with unparalleled precision all the phases of the cosmos, until the first ages of the universe and the formation of the first galaxies.
Sources:
- on the search for life in the ‘universe, based on the study of the atmosphere of exoplanets (Science, 2015)
- Five methods for detecting Exoplanets (NASA)
- Mass of red dwarfs (m) and oranges (k) compared to the Sun mass: Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics: 2nd Ed, Martin V. Zombeck (page 72)
- on different types of biosignatures (NASA, 2015)
- List of main absorption rays of different chemical elements ( National Institute of Standards and Technology)
- on the links between oxygen and life
- List (regularly updated) Exoplanets discoveries