China enters the race to search for habitable worlds and targets 100 stars near Earth
A proposed Chinese mission will search for nearby potentially habitable alien worlds by launching a spacecraft to make ultra-precise measurements of how orbiting planets affect the wobble of stars.
In this mission, called the Close Up Survey of the Habitable Exoplanets, scientists will use a method called relativistic astrometry to the minute arcsecond. This technology involves taking ultra-precise measurements of the positions and motions of stars against a set of background stars to detect star disturbances caused by the gravitational effect of exoplanets as they orbit their stars.
This method will provide estimates of the masses of exoplanets and the distance they orbit around their stars, which in turn may reveal whether these exoplanets have the potential to host life.
The European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope uses the same method to create a 3-D map of a billion stars in the Milky Way. But the Chinese mission will be more focused, targeting 100 Sun-like stars at a distance of 33 light-years from Earth and will be able to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones around those stars.
"Searching for habitable worlds around nearby sun-like stars will be a great breakthrough for humanity and will help humans visit Earth's alignment and expand our living space in the future," said Ji Jiangui, a research professor at the Purple Mountain Observatory at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the lead researcher on the mission.
More than 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered, including 50 Earth-like in the habitable zone, but most of them are hundreds of light-years away from Earth.
Elizabeth Tasker, associate professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said the Chinese mission "would be a great addition to the exploration of exoplanets. While the potential number of targets is small, measuring planet masses for worlds orbiting our neighboring stars would be a valuable addition to our existing data and a step toward identifying valid worlds." for habitation."
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