Something in the Air

The James Webb Space Telescope is looking for atmospheres— and signs of life—on planets circling the star TRAPPIST-1

- ED BROWNE

SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THAT DATA FROM THE JAMES Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable them to figure out whether a group of nearby exoplanets are habitable or not, a NASA expert says.

JWST should be able to determine whether any of the planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 have atmospheres, according to NASA astrobiologist Shawn Domagal-Goldman. And If the exoplanets have the right kind of atmospheres, they may also have life.

Despite decades of scanning the skies for radio signals and an ever-growing list of exoplanets—the name given to planets orbiting other stars—scientists have never found evidence that life exists anywhere but Earth.

The TRAPPIST-1 System

The TRAPPIST-1 star system is a collection of at least seven exoplanets orbiting a dwarf star roughly 40 light-years away from Earth that is considered to be the leading candidate for potentially habitable worlds. While preliminary investigations have revealed that some of the planets are rocky and possibly temperate, the key question of whether or not they have atmospheres has been impossible to settle so far.

That was before JWST, NASA’s most powerful space telescope ever, was launched in December. By using a huge array of mirrors to help it capture as much light as possible, JWST has been peering into the cosmos and has already taken the deepest infrared image of the universe ever. For several weeks, it’s also had its sights trained on TRAPPIST-1.