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New Planet-Hunting Telescope To Join Search For Alien Earths In 2024
Artist’s conception of exoplanet systems that could be observed by PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO), a European Space Agency telescope. Credit: ESA – C. Carreau
How could life arise in young solar systems? We’re still not sure of the answer on Earth, even for something as basic as if water arose natively on our planet or was carried in from other locations. Seeking answers to life’s beginnings will require eyes in the sky and on the ground looking for alien worlds like our own. And just yesterday, the European Space Agency announced it is going to add to that search.
The newly selected mission is called PLATO, for Planetary Transits and Oscillations. Like NASA’s Kepler space telescope, PLATO will scan the sky in search of stars that have small, periodic dips in their brightness that happen when planets go across their parent star’s face.
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Read the rest of New Planet-Hunting Telescope To Join Search For Alien Earths In 2024 (428 words)
© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/109583/new-planet-hunting-telescope-to-join-search-for-alien-earths-in-2024/
