This interactive chart shows how ground-based missions, followed by space-based missions, contribute progressively toward NASA's goal of finding another Earth.
SIM Lite (formerly Space Interferometry Mission PlanetQuest), currently under development, will measure the distances and positions of stars several hundred times more accurately than any previous observations. SIM's precision will allow us to determine the distances to stars throughout the galaxy and to detect evidence of planets just slightly larger than Earth.
The Keck Interferometer combines the light of the world's largest optical telescopes to measure the emission from dust orbiting nearby stars and to directly detect and characterize hot gas giant planets in other solar systems.
The two Terrestrial Planet Finder observatories will be capable of detecting and characterizing Earth-like planets around as many as 200 stars up to 45 light years away. The project will look for the atmospheric signatures (such as water, carbon dioxide, and ozone) of habitable or even inhabited planets.
Support for all of the missions listed on this page is provided by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExSci), a science operations and analysis service sponsored by the Origins theme and operated by the California Institute of Technology. The NExSci facilitates timely and successful execution of projects that use interferometry, a key technology in NASA's planet-finding program.
Two 8-meter class telescopes on Mount Graham, Arizona, will be linked to create an infrared interferometer capable of imaging distant galaxies and other faint objects over a wide field-of-view.
Launched in 2003, the Spitzer Space Telescope has become a premier tool in the quest to characterize exoplanets and the protoplanetary disks where planets are formed. Spitzer uses infrared technology to provide a unique view of the universe and allow astronomers to peer into regions of space which are hidden from optical telescopes.
Kepler, a NASA Discovery mission, is a spaceborne telescope designed to survey distant stars to determine the prevalence of Earthlike planets. Scheduled to launch in 2009, Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by planetary transits.
Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope is one of NASA's most successful and long-lasting science missions. has also been an important tool for planet hunters. The telescope has been used to look for the telltale wobbles of stars that indicate the presence of planets as well as the dimming of stars that occur when their planets pass in front of them.
By combining light from telescopes at the Palomar Observatory, PTI takes the first crack at developing technologies that combine light coming in from distant objects in the cosmos.
The Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh) project will use the cameras already in place on the Deep Impact spacecraft to look for transiting exoplanets, observe the "wobbling" motions of stars with planets, and even analyze the light reflected off the surfaces of far away planets. The spacecraft will conduct observations during the first half of 2008.
The European Space Agency's Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits
(CoRoT) mission is designed to observe planetary transits in front of their host stars. CoRoT's extremely sensitive light-detecting instruments can measure tiny dips in the brightness of a star that indicate the passage of a planet. CoRoT's current mission plan includes a survey of more than 120,000 stars.
Launched in June 2003, the Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars (MOST) project is the Canadian Space Agency's first space telescope. While not specifically a planet-finding mission, MOST has been able to find planets because it can spend up to seven weeks at a time observing a star and watching the fluctuations in its brightness.
SIM Mission Area
