![]() ![]() The mission would follow up on observations of an area of space that NASA’s Kepler space telescope studied for nine years, but the Earth 2.0 Telescope would have a much greater field of view, meaning it would be able to observe a larger area and more stars, Ge said. “Some of these planet candidates around bright stars can be further followed up with ground-based or space-based spectroscopy to obtain transmission spectra of planets to study their atmospheres’ compositions.” “These planet candidates can be followed up with ground-based telescopes to obtain radial velocity measurements to determine their masses and densities,” Ge said. The Earth 2.0 Telescope would not be able to confirm an Earth twin on its own rather, it would measure planets’ sizes and orbital periods to identify candidates for follow-up observations for potential habitability, Ge Jian, a professor at the SAO, told via email. Related: NASA needs a new telescope, ASAP, to find Earth’s twin This requires high sensitivity to spot the signals of small-planet transits, as well as long-term monitoring to glimpse planets that take an Earthly year to go around their star. The main targets are roughly Earth-size exoplanets with similar orbits around sun-like stars. There, it would fixed its seven telescopes on a portion of the sky toward the galactic center and watch for signs of dimming as planets transit, or pass in front of, a star as they orbit. The Earth 2.0 Telescope would spend four years orbiting sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. China could soon begin its first space-based hunt for exoplanets, if a proposal from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO) gets the go-ahead this summer.
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