by Sean Martin March 8, 2019 (express.co.uk)
• The UK Space Agency has announced it will spend £25 million on the ‘Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars’ mission, placing 26 telescopes and cameras around the globe which will look for habitable planets in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ in one million nearby star systems. The mission will be headquartered at the University of Warwick (Coventry, England).
• The telescopes will look at the transit zones of the star when a planet crosses the face of a star, and scientists can note a dip in brightness. The telescopes will then examine the chemical make-up of the planets, and look for ‘biosignatures’ – signs of life. Science Minister Chris Skidmore said, “(This mission) may eventually lead to us answering the question of whether extra-terrestrial life exists.”
• Professor Don Pollacco of the University of Warwick leading the PLATO Science Management Consortium, said, “These planets will be close enough to facilitate a historic search for signs of life in their atmospheres using the next generation of large telescopes. For the first time we will start to understand if life exists beyond the solar system.”
• The UK government will also spend £10million to help create the ‘Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer’, which will examine how space weather interacts with Earth. “Space weather – such as solar wind – is a potential threat to our communications systems here on Earth so this research examining how the wind interacts with our planet’s electromagnetic system is important,” said Skidmore.
• “[O]ur investment will ensure UK scientists and engineers will be leading participants in all aspects of the mission… through our ongoing membership of the European Space Agency,” Chris Lee, Chief Scientist at the UK Space Agency, said. “(This) is a game changer in Exoplanet science.”
The UK Space Agency has announced it is committing the large sum to a mission which will browse the universe for signs of life. The mission is known as Plato, short for Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars, and will use 26 telescopes and cameras around the globe which will examine one million nearby star systems. University of Warwick is heading the mission, which states the plan is to look for habitable planets that are orbiting the ‘goldilocks zone’ – a region around a host star where it is neither too hot nor too cold.
The telescopes will look at the transit zones of the star to determine this. The transit zone is when a planet crosses the face of a star, and scientists can note a dip in brightness.
The telescopes will then examine the chemical make-up of the planets, and look for ‘biosignatures’ – signs of life.
Science Minister Chris Skidmore said: “Work to discover Earth-like planets around other stars may eventually lead to us answering the question of whether extra-terrestrial life exists.”
Professor Don Pollacco, University of Warwick, which leads the PLATO Science Management Consortium, said: “These planets will be close enough to facilitate a historic search for signs of life in their atmospheres using the next generation of large telescopes.
“For the first time we will start to understand if life exists beyond the solar system.”
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