When the world’s most powerful telescope launches into space this year, scientists will learn whether Earth-sized planets in our ‘solar neighborhood’ have a key prerequisite for life — an atmosphere.

These planets orbit an M-dwarf, the smallest and most common type of star in the galaxy. Scientists do not currently know how common it is for Earth-like planets around this type of star to have characteristics that would make them habitable.

«As a starting place, it is important to know whether small, rocky planets orbiting M-dwarfs have atmospheres,» said Daria Pidhorodetska, a doctoral student in UC Riverside’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. «If so, it opens up our search for life outside our solar system.»

To help fill this gap in understanding, Pidhorodetska and her team studied whether the soon-to-launch James Webb Space Telescope, or the currently-in-orbit Hubble Space Telescope, are capable of detecting atmospheres on these planets. They also modeled the types of atmospheres likely to be found, if they exist, and how they could be distinguished from each other. The study has now been published in the Astronomical Journal.

Study co-authors include astrobiologists Edward Schwieterman and Stephen Kane from UCR, as well as scientists from Johns Hopkins University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Cornell University and the University of Chicago.

The star at the center of the study is an M-dwarf called L 98-59, which measures only 8% of our sun’s mass. Though small, it is only 35 light years from Earth. It’s brightness and relative closeness make it an ideal target for observation.

Story Source: Materials provided by University of California — Riverside. Original written by Jules Bernstein. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.