NASA Statement On Alpha Centauri Planet Discovery

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Oct. 17, 2012

J.D. Harrington 
Headquarters, Washington      
202-358-5241 
j.d.harrington@xxxxxxxx 


RELEASE: 12-366

NASA STATEMENT ON ALPHA CENTAURI PLANET DISCOVERY

WASHINGTON -- The following is a statement about the European Southern 
Observatory's latest exoplanet discovery from NASA's Science Mission 
Directorate Associate Administrator, Dr. John Grunsfeld. 

"We congratulate the European Southern Observatory team for making 
this exciting new exoplanet discovery. For astronomers, the search 
for exoplanets helps us understand our place in the universe and 
determine whether Earth is unique in supporting life or if it is just 
one member of a large community of habitable worlds. NASA has several 
current and future missions that will continue in this search. 

"An example is NASA's Kepler mission. It was specifically designed to 
survey a specific region of our Milky Way galaxy to detect Earth-size 
and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone -- that region 
around a star where it is theoretically possible for a planet to 
maintain liquid water on its surface -- and determine the fraction of 
the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such 
planets. Kepler works very differently from HARPS. Rather than 
detecting the wobble in the host star, Kepler detects the slight 
dimming of a star when a planet passes in front of it. 

"NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have contributed to the 
study of exoplanets. Using their photometric and spectroscopic 
sensitivity, these space telescopes have made the first steps in 
characterizing the atmospheres of planets around other stars. They 
can only do this when the exoplanets pass serendipitously in front of 
its star, allowing the space telescope to study light that has 
filtered through the planet's atmosphere. 

"NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will provide a unique 
facility that will serve through the next decade as the mainstay for 
characterization of transiting exoplanets. The main transit studies 
JWST will be able to undertake are: discovery of unseen planets, 
determining exoplanet properties like mass, radius, and physical 
structure, and characterizing exoplanet atmospheres to determine 
things like their temperature and weather. If there are other planets 
in the Alpha Centauri system farther from the star, JWST may be able 
to detect them as well through imaging. 

"NASA is also studying two medium-class exoplanet missions in our 
Explorer program, and in the spring of 2013 will select one of them 
to enter development for flight later in the decade." 

For more information about NASA's missions and programs, visit: 


http://www.nasa.gov 

	
-end-



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