It is piloted by NASA, but the world’s main space agencies and a team of scientists have embarked on the ambitious project to try to find habitable worlds. more than 1,000 scientists and engineers already working on a mission focused on look for signs of life on planets that orbit other stars; looking for a clone of the Land.
He Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO, in English) will be a gigantic telescope designed to search for these signs of life, and although its launch to the place from which it will scan the cosmos is scheduled for end of next decadethe sophisticated scientific and technological framework necessary for a mission of these characteristics has already begun to be put together. build.
Potentially habitable worlds
The observatory, according to NASA, will provide powerful capabilities to carry out astrophysical discoveriesfrom the “backyard” of the Solar System to the most distant Universe, and based on the knowledge of several previous space missions, this one has been specifically designed to identify planets potentially habitable around other stars, examining up close atmospheres to determine if it is possible for life to exist.
The objective is to identify and obtain direct images of at least 25 worlds potentially habitable and use modern technologies – such as spectroscopy – to try to find chemical “biosignatures” in their atmospheres, including gases such as oxygen or he methanewhich could constitute fundamental proof of the existence of life.
The first step has been the launch of the Science, Technology and Architecture Review Team (START), in which more than 1,000 researchers and engineers from around the world participate.
In the wake of Hubble and James Webb
The Japanese JAXA, the Canadian CSA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have joined the mission led by NASA, which has already appointed the three researchers who will join this team, from which they will coordinate the efforts of academia and industry in a project that follows in the footsteps of others very emblematic – like telescopes Hubble either James Webb-.
The professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and director of the Space Astronomy Research Group at the Complutense University of Madrid will join this multidisciplinary team, representing ESA, Ana Inés Gómez de Castro; David Mouillet, from the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of the University of Grenoble (France); and Michael Minfrom the Netherlands Space Research Institute.
The HWO mission will continue for the next years To try to identify the best candidates to harbor some sign of life, which constitutes one of the most ambitious scientific and technological projects of recent decades, but the space observatory will also include instrumentation to study the chemical evolution of the Universe or the formation of planetary systems with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity.
Getting closer to finding life
Gómez de Castro has explained to EFE that it is about searching “an Earth clone”and to locate planets that in terms of atmosphere, vegetation or oceans could be capable of supporting life, that were literally “habitable“, and to find, therefore, molecules of oxygenof ammoniaof methane or of water that pointed out that it is a system similar to that of Earth.
Is man getting closer to finding life in other places? After many decades of space exploration and thanks to the development of modern and emerging technologies, the professor categorically answers that Yeah; but also that although this is the main objective of the mission, the science, knowledge and industry that are going to be devoted to this project will allow us to investigate the distribution of the dark matter or the origin of galaxies.
Over the next few years, scientists around the world will determine the specific science they want to know and measure before determining the instruments needed and industry getting to work building them.
“Historical” mission
It will, therefore, be a mission that will last for many yearssince it was conceived by the United States Academy of Sciences and assumed by NASA until its launch at the end of the next decade, but Gómez de Castro does not doubt that It will be “historical” for the knowledge, engineering, technology and financing that it will require.
And although during her long research and teaching career she has been involved in numerous space projects and missions, the professor does not hide the excitement generated by the possibility of finding “a clone” of the Earth. “Imagine seeing the first image of that little blue dot, like our Earthand watch it orbit another star.”
For now, space agencies They lack the technologies and instrumentation necessary to achieve it, although she is convinced that they will have them within the established deadlines, and among the major challenges of the mission she cites the need to develop a optical system to be capable of “covering” a star which can be up to 100 million times brighter than another object (a potentially habitable world) next to it. “And we’re going to have it, for sure.”
