New Telescope Hunts for Earth Sized Planets

TENxOXR writes "The French-led Corot mission has taken off from Kazakhstan on a quest to find planets outside our Solar System. The space telescope will monitor about 120,000 stars for tiny dips in brightness that result from planets passing across their faces. The multinational mission will also study the stars directly to uncover more about their interior behavior."

Re:Can we tell how much water is on these planets?

[thue]

If the Terrestrial Planet Finder [wikipedia.org] or Darwin [wikipedia.org] gets built then we should be able to analyze the planet's atmosphere using passive spectroscopy [wikipedia.org]. This could for example reveal whether the atmosphere contained O2.

The Terrestrial Planet Finder is far more interesting than putting human boots on mars or the moon, IMO. Cheaper too. Unfortunately NASA doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to built it.

Re:A time-saving tip

[E++99]

No atmosphere == no liquid water.

In fact, no atmosphere == no liquid anything.

That's a good point, but it only applies to surface liquids. Now, I suppose that if there is literally *no* atmosphere, then over time you will lose whatever gas/liquid resources you start with. But as a matter of organism survival, any solid planet with geological processes is going have plenty of opportunity for subterranean liquid and gas.

Re:Recent Russian launch failures

[Rolo Tomasi]

Funny you should mention the Atlas, because it's using Russian engines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(missile) [wikipedia.org]