Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b likely not habitable

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-03-28 02:00

International

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sorry folks, if you thought there was a chance humanity could escape to the Earth-like planet TRAPPIST-1 b, US and French researchers say the exoplanet likely hasn't trapped an atmosphere. The team used instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope to figure out that there is little or no planetary atmosphere that would be bouncing radiation away from it's host star, and other atmosphere markers such as carbon dioxide were not present.

Journal/
conference: Nature

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: NASA’s Ames Research Center, USA

Funder: funding support from the NASA Next Generation Space Telescope Flight Investigations program (now JWST) via WBS 411672.07.04.01.02. This material is based upon work supported by NASA’S Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (NNH19ZDA001N-ICAR) under award number 19-ICAR19 2-0041 (for J.J.F) and NASA WBS 811073.02.12.04.71 (for T.P.G.). P.O.L. acknowledges funding support from CNES. E.D. acknowledges support from the innovation and research Horizon 2020 program in the context of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie subvention 945298.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.