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The Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON) serves as a gathering point for scientists and experts in the Astrobiology field from Europe and beyond. During the latest conference, held on La Palma Island (Canary Islands, Spain) from May, 8th to 12th 2023, the LIFE Team made significant contributions, which we highlight here.
The Swiss government will contribute nearly three million euros to support the NICE (Nulling Interferometer Cryogenic Experiment) project as part of PRODEX (PROgramme de Développement d’EXpériences scientifiques), a European Space Agency (ESA) programme.
During this year’s general assembly of the Swiss National Competence Center for Research (NCCR) ‘PlanetS’, LIFE was featured at various occasions. On Monday during the main session Sascha Quanz pitched our concept as one of the possible future flagships of the Swiss space community. In the domain C meeting Eleonora Alei and Björn Konrad presented … Continued
he European Space Agency’s (ESA) PLANET ESLAB workshop was an exciting conference bridging between planetary and exoplanet science and an ideal occasion to advocate for LIFE and attract more supporters. For many LIFE team members it was the first opportunity to meet in person and discuss synergies between the various fields represented in our diverse team.
The Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON) serves as a gathering point for scientists and experts in the Astrobiology field from Europe and beyond. During the latest conference, held on La Palma Island (Canary Islands, Spain) from May, 8th to 12th 2023, the LIFE Team made significant contributions, which we highlight here.
The Swiss government will contribute nearly three million euros to support the NICE (Nulling Interferometer Cryogenic Experiment) project as part of PRODEX (PROgramme de Développement d’EXpériences scientifiques), a European Space Agency (ESA) programme.
During this year’s general assembly of the Swiss National Competence Center for Research (NCCR) ‘PlanetS’, LIFE was featured at various occasions. On Monday during the main session Sascha Quanz pitched our concept as one of the possible future flagships of the Swiss space community. In the domain C meeting Eleonora Alei and Björn Konrad presented … Continued
he European Space Agency’s (ESA) PLANET ESLAB workshop was an exciting conference bridging between planetary and exoplanet science and an ideal occasion to advocate for LIFE and attract more supporters. For many LIFE team members it was the first opportunity to meet in person and discuss synergies between the various fields represented in our diverse team.
In Konrad et al. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.04727), the LIFE team studied different quality thermal emission spectra of cloudy Venus-twin exoplanet using Bayesian atmospheric retrievals. The goal of this study was to: test how the retrieval routine introduced in LIFE paper III performs for a realistic non-Earth-like MIR spectrum of a known planet, investigate how clouds impact can … Continued
Comets around other stars than the Sun – exocomets – have so far only been possible to discover indirectly, when they pass in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth. In a new study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Janson et al. (arxiv) show that LIFE can be used to detect … Continued
Phosphine is a key molecule in the understanding of exotic chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres. While it has been detected in the Solar System’s giant planets, it has not been observed in exoplanets yet. In the exoplanetary context however it has been theorized as a potential biosignature molecule. Angerhausen et al. identified a representative set of scenarios for phosphine detections in exoplanetary atmospheres varying over the whole dynamic range of the LIFE mission.
In this paper, Hansen et al (arxiv) follows on their analysis of architectures from paper IV, this time delving into some of the practical and instrumental considerations of building a beam combiner. They present a possible five telescope combiner design based on the work of Guyon, 2013, consisting of a cascade of beam splitters and … Continued
Kammerer et al. (arXiv link) show that LIFE would also be a powerful mission to search for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars. This is important because the true habitability of habitable zone (HZ) planets around M-dwarfs is still an open question and previous LIFE yield estimates had shown a strong preference for detections around M-dwarfs. … Continued
“What is life? Where, when and how did life arise on Earth? What ingredients were likely present and how were they delivered to Earth? Under what conditions is life possible and is life likely to exist on other planets or celestial bodies?” These and other questions are tackled by a group of world leading experts … Continued
Hansen et al. revisits the studies of configurations and architectures that were taken in the days of Darwin/TPF-I.
In Alei et al. 2022, the fifth paper of the LIFE series (link to arXiv) we explore the potential of LIFE for characterizing emission spectra of Earth at various stages of its evolution. Assuming a distance of 10 pc and a Sun-like host star, we simulated observations obtained with LIFE on eight different scenarios, which … Continued
On June 8th the LIFE team assembled for its spring/summer 2022 all-hands meeting. The initiative was able to welcome a number of new members and energize the community with exciting news about the successful LIFE paper series or the launch of the new LIFE brand.
On their trip between the Exoplanets 4 and the AbSciCon conferences, researchers from the LIFE initiatives met with colleagues on the US East Coast formeetings and presentations at the University of Maryland, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
During the general assembly of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS in Grindelwald, Switzerland, LIFE team members Eleonora Alei and Björn Konrad presented their LIFE related research.
The first paper in the LIFE paper series was recently accepted for publication in A&A! Quanz et al. 2022 introduce the LIFE initiative and the motivation behind it and perform detection yield estimates for different scenarios and instrument parameters.
In Konrad et al. 2022, the LIFE team derived first constraints on the technical requirements for the LIFE telescope in wavelength coverage, spectral resolution, and signal-to-noise ratio.
In Dannert & Ottiger et al. 2022, the LIFE team describes the process of simulating a LIFE observation with the publicly available LIFEsim tool. We present our methods for signal simulation ( and the subsequent extraction of planets, finding that mid-IR nulling interferometry can indeed provide direct measurements of planetary radii, temperatures and astrometry.
The White Paper that we submitted to the ESA in the context of the Voyage 2050 process was published by “Experimental Astronomy”.
ESA announced their choice for future L-class science mission themes and the detection and characterization of temperate exoplanets is considered to be one of them!
Jens Kammerer is presenting a poster on behalf of the LIFE initiative at the STScI spring Symposium “Towards the Comprehensive Characterization of Exoplanets: Science at the Interface of Multiple Measurement Technique”
A number of virtual kick-off meetings were organized to define the various LIFE Teams and Working Groups.
LIFE Paper I entitled “Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE): I. Improved exoplanet detection yield estimates for a large mid-infrared space-interferometer mission” was submitted to A&A!
“LIFE workshop 3” was held online on Monday, November 30, and Tuesday, December 1, 2020. With more than 150 participants we achieved a new all-time high!
Two LIFE related talks were presented at EPSC 2020.
LIFE was presented at the NASA-sponsored interdisciplinary workshop Technoclimes.
The next LIFE workshop (III) will be held in Liège, Belgium from Monday November 30, 2020 (11 am) to Tuesday December 1, 2020 (5 pm). The registration can be found here.
The online “Virtual Mini-Workshop: LIFE – Large Interferometer For Exoplanets” on May 14 2020 attracted almost 200 participants.
LIFE was presented at BlueSciCon 2020 of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science on May 8.
The “Virtual Mini-Workshop: LIFE – Large Interferometer For Exoplanets” will introduce a larger audience to the LIFE concept and will be held fully online, on Thursday, 14 May 2020, 4.00–6.00 pm CEST. Registration is closed now.
NICE (Nulling Interferometric Cryogenic Experiment for LIFE) was kicked off.
LIFE was presented at a “Workshop on Innovative Technologies for Space Optics” at ESA/ESTEC on November 4.
The White Paper submitted to ESA in the context of the Voyage 2050 program was selected for presentation at the related ESA workshop in Madrid.
LIFE was presented at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2019 in Geneva.
LIFE will be presented at an upcoming workshop at ESA on “Innovative Technologies for Space Optics”. The talk is scheduled for the session on ultrastable onto-mechanical architectures.
The dates for the 2nd LIFE workshop are fixed and the LIFE team submits their White Paper in response to ESA’s call for supporting the long-term planning of the Science Programme.
The LIFE presentation shown at AbSciCon2019 is available here.
An abstract submitted by the LIFE team to give a talk at the AbSciCon2019 conference was accepted!
ESA issued a Call for White Papers in the VOYAGE 2050 long-term planning of the ESA Science Programme.
In the context of the US decadal survey that is carried out to help assess and prioritize future NASA space missions several White Papers dealing with LIFE-related science and mission concepts were submitted.
LIFE workshop 1 successfully took place at DLR in Berlin/Adlershof.
A paper entitled “Space-based infrared interferometry to study exoplanet atmospheres” has just been published by Experimental Astronomy (click here for the final version).
A paper discussing the potential of several (future) instruments to directly detect young rocky planets undergoing a post-impact magma ocean phase was accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The National Academy of Sciences published their “Exoplanet Science Strategy” report.
LIFE related papers from the SPIE conference are now available online. Please check out Quanz et al. (2018) and Defrere et al. (2018b).
LIFE was presented on a poster at the “Exoplanets 2” conference July 2-6, 2018, in Cambridge.
LIFE and related mission ideas were presented at the SPIE conference “Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation” in Austin/Texas, June 10-15, 2018.
LIFE was featured in a presentation at Caltech on the requirements for imaging and spectroscopy of habitable planets
A proposal to install an ISSI International Team further developing the science of LIFE and assessing the status of key technologies was submitted.
A new review paper by Defrere et al. about space-based interferometry for exoplanet science was submitted to Experimental Astronomy. The submitted version can be found here.
The science of LIFE was presented in a presentation at the European Planetary Science Congress held on September 17-22 in Riga, Latvia.
Life in the media
[ETH press release] With a constellation of five satellites, the international LIFE initiative led by ETH Zurich hopes to one day detect traces of life on exoplanets. A laboratory experiment in the Department of Physics is now set to demonstrate the planned measurement method.
[earthsky.org]The two new planets – GJ 1002b and GJ 1002c – orbit the red dwarf star GJ 1002, less than 16 light-years from Earth. That is very close in terms of stellar distances. Both planets have masses similar to Earth and orbit within the star’s habitable zone. That is the region around a star where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist on rocky planets. […] In the future, the LIFE (Large Interferometer For Exoplanets) mission should also be able to study these planets more closely. LIFE is currently in a first-study phase.
[Forbes] These days almost every other week, there’s a new media flap about some newly discovered potentially habitable planet orbiting a nearby star. Trouble is, most of these exoplanet detections are indirect and researchers end up speculating about their mass, their makeup, their atmospheric compositions and whether they could ever harbor life.
But a group of planetary scientists and astrophysicists, led by a professor at ETH Zurich, has largely resurrected an idea for a flotilla of optically linked, free-flying mid-infrared telescopes that could find heretofore undiscovered earth mass planets in their star’s habitable zone.
[Der Bund, CH] Spacex-Chef Elon Musk hat eine Vision: Der Mensch soll den Mars besiedeln. Auf dem Weg dahin sind entsprechende Verkehrsmittel gefragt – eine Rakete etwa, die 100 Personen transportieren soll. Und auch die Nasa schmiedet Pläne.[…] Glauser erwähnt in diesem Zusammenhang das Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (Life), das an der ETH Zürich verfolgt wird.
[Daily Beast] Using new instruments—including NASA’s $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope as well as the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets, a probe in development in Europe—it’s possible to survey the atmospheres of distant exoplanets far beyond our own solar system.
[Popular Science] The Large Interferometer for Exoplanets could chase new exoplanets and galaxies with a fleet of tools—if it ever gets off the ground.
[ETH press release] With a constellation of five satellites, the international LIFE initiative led by ETH Zurich hopes to one day detect traces of life on exoplanets. A laboratory experiment in the Department of Physics is now set to demonstrate the planned measurement method.
[earthsky.org]The two new planets – GJ 1002b and GJ 1002c – orbit the red dwarf star GJ 1002, less than 16 light-years from Earth. That is very close in terms of stellar distances. Both planets have masses similar to Earth and orbit within the star’s habitable zone. That is the region around a star where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist on rocky planets. […] In the future, the LIFE (Large Interferometer For Exoplanets) mission should also be able to study these planets more closely. LIFE is currently in a first-study phase.
[Forbes] These days almost every other week, there’s a new media flap about some newly discovered potentially habitable planet orbiting a nearby star. Trouble is, most of these exoplanet detections are indirect and researchers end up speculating about their mass, their makeup, their atmospheric compositions and whether they could ever harbor life.
But a group of planetary scientists and astrophysicists, led by a professor at ETH Zurich, has largely resurrected an idea for a flotilla of optically linked, free-flying mid-infrared telescopes that could find heretofore undiscovered earth mass planets in their star’s habitable zone.
[Der Bund, CH] Spacex-Chef Elon Musk hat eine Vision: Der Mensch soll den Mars besiedeln. Auf dem Weg dahin sind entsprechende Verkehrsmittel gefragt – eine Rakete etwa, die 100 Personen transportieren soll. Und auch die Nasa schmiedet Pläne.[…] Glauser erwähnt in diesem Zusammenhang das Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (Life), das an der ETH Zürich verfolgt wird.
[Daily Beast] Using new instruments—including NASA’s $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope as well as the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets, a probe in development in Europe—it’s possible to survey the atmospheres of distant exoplanets far beyond our own solar system.
[Popular Science] The Large Interferometer for Exoplanets could chase new exoplanets and galaxies with a fleet of tools—if it ever gets off the ground.
[National Geographic, Indonesia] Kelak, interferometer nulling akan digunakan lewat LIFE, singkatan dari Large Interferometer for Exoplanets. Orang yang mengupayakannya terwujud adalah Sacha Quanz, astrofisikawan di Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich, Swiss.
[Pantip, Thailand] ด้วยภารกิจ “LIFE” (Large Interferometer For Exoplanets) แนวคิดเกี่ยวกับภารกิจอวกาศที่มีความทะเยอทะยานพร้อมความสามารถทางวิทยาศาสตร์ที่ไม่มีใครเทียบได้ ซึ่งจะได้รับการปรับให้เหมาะสมสำหรับการตรวจจับโดยตรง และการกำหนดลักษณะบรรยากาศของดาวเคราะห์นอกระบบหลายร้อยดวงได้ โดย LIFE ได้นำเสนอเทคโนโลยีใหม่สำหรับการตรวจจับดาวเคราะห์นอกระบบด้วย mid-IR interferometers แบบ Nulling Interferometer หลักการคือการสร้าง “จุดบอด” เสมือนจริงในตำแหน่งที่แน่นอนของแหล่งกำเนิดแสงที่เป็นดาวฤกษ์ เพื่อที่จะเปิดเผยแหล่งกำเนิดแสงที่สลัวกว่า ซึ่งเป็นดาวเคราะห์ที่โคจรรอบมัน
[Blick, CH] Alf, E.T. oder Independence Day – Aliens kennt jeder aus Filmen und Serien. Doch die Wissenschaft beschäftigt sich mittlerweile ganz ernsthaft damit, Spuren von ausserirdischem Leben auf fernen Planeten aufzuspüren – und Schweizer Forscher sind vorne mit dabei.
[Innovation News] ETH Zurich’s Professor Sascha P Quanz explores the future exoplanet missions that will search for life beyond our Solar System.
[Physics today] Nulling interferometry draws aside bright stellar glare to probe fine dust in extrasolar systems that may hamper future searches for Earthlike worlds.
[Canberra Times] Jonah Hansen, LIFE team member and PhD student specialising in space interferometry at Mount Stromlo Observatory, at the Australian National University summarizes the LIFE mission concept for the Canberra Times.
[Innovation news network] Coordinated by ETH Zurich, the European LIFE mission is seeking to characterise the atmospheric composition of hundreds of nearby exoplanets to discover if life on exoplanets can exist beyond our Solar System.
[Science.org] Themes for billion-euro Voyage 2050 missions include icy moons, exoplanets, and the early universe.
[Science.org] The biggest space missions gestate for the longest time. Today, the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed the three broad science themes it wants to pursue for large-scale missions of €1 billion or more that would launch between 2035 and 2050.
[Sonntagszeitung] Vier Wissenschaftler, darunter der Schweizer Nobelpreisträger Didier Queloz, geben Auskunft über Sinn und Zweck des neuen «Zentrums für den Ursprung und die Verbreitung von Leben» an der ETH Zürich.
[Innovation News Network] LIFE – a future space mission to characterise the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets and search for life outside the Solar System.
[University of Bern magazine UniPress] Kevin Heng, Christophe Lovis und Sascha Quanz erforschen weitentfernte Planeten in anderen Sonnensystemen. Unter anderem sind sie auf der Suche nach Leben. Dabei wandeln sie immer an der Grenze des Machbaren. Eine Begegnung.
[de Volkskrant paper in the Netherlands) An article about an online conference of the Dutch Origins Center.
[Neue Zuericher Zeitung NZZ] LIFE is mentioned in an article about SETI-research.
[bluewin.ch article] In der Milchstrasse könnte es gut drei Dutzend intelligente Zivilisationen geben, glauben britische Forscher. Ein Astrophysiker der ETH Zürich setzt allerdings ein Fragezeichen hinter solche Schätzungen.
[The Observer (external newsletter of the Swiss NCCR PlanetS)] The “LIFE” mission, proposed by PlanetS researchers, could help answer questions about the habitability of our cosmic environment by employing a direct approach.
[Exocast podcast] In America, WFIRST has been renamed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in honour to the pioneering “Mother Hubble”, while in Europe the LIFE mission kicked off.
[Deutschlandfunk Radio ‘Echtzeit’] One topic, four facets: Today we deal with the universe in real time – something that not only fascinates science fiction fans, but also astrophysicists, architects and techno musicians. When will we really take off?
Once a month, SAGANet (www.saganet.org) and the NASA Astrobiology Program host a program called “Ask an Astrobiologist”, where the public is invited to interact with a high-profile astrobiologist, who replies to Twitter, Facebook, and chat questions live on video.
[Centauri Dreams post] Among the discoveries announced at the recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Hawaii was TOI 700 d, a planet potentially in the habitable zone of its star. TOI stands for TESS Object of Interest, reminding us that this is the first Earth-size planet the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has uncovered in its data whose orbit would allow the presence of liquid water on the surface.
[Medium article, also NCCR PlanetS press release] Planets start out with a bang. During the last stage of planet formation, planetary embryos collide with other protoplanets, causing their surfaces and mantles to extensively melt. Will it be possible to directly image such molten protoplanets with future telescopes?
[Swiss online magazine Le Temps] In 2007 the DARWIN project for observing Earth-sized exoplanets by a group of interferometric space telescopes was abandoned by its promoter, the ESA. Today researchers from ETH Zürich are highlighting the interest of resuming a comparable project, given the observations accumulated by the Kepler mission.
[Article in The Observer (external newsletter of the Swiss NCCR PlanetS)] The characterization of habitable or even inhabited exoplanets is one of the ultimate goals of modern astrophysics. Reviving the concept of a space mission that was cancelled ten years ago would be most promising.