Several mission concepts are being studied to directly image planets around nearby stars. The search for another Earth-like planet (exo-Earth) and extraterrestrial life is one of the most fundamental, grand, and noble pursuits not just in astronomy, but in all of science. The discovery of a true exo-Earth is likely to be hailed as a major milestone of our civilization, on par with the landings on the Moon and humanity’s first steps in space. In the 2020s, the WFIRST-AFTA, or one of Exo-C or Exo-S may directly image a few potentially habitable worlds. Ultimately, a large space based coronagraphic telescope like LUVOIR or HabEx will have the ability to search hundreds of stars for potentially habitable worlds and take spectra with enough resolution to detect biomarkers like oxygen and water.
Exo-C will be a space telescope designed to directly image and spectrally characterize exoplanets and circumstellar disks at optical wavelengths. The mission employs an internal coronagraph with precision wavefront control to study nearby, known exoplanets detected by ground-based radial velocity and new discoveries of exoplanets down to super-Earth size. It will resolve structures and measure dust properties in a large sample of exo-Kuiper belts and a smaller sample of habitable zones. It has the potential to detect Earth-twins if they are present around a few of the nearest stars, if the exozodi is low and if exceptional telescope stability is achieved.
Exo-S is a direct imaging space-based mission to discover and characterize exoplanets. With its modest size, Exo-S bridges the gap between census missions like Kepler and a future spacebased flagship direct imaging exoplanet mission
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