The James Webb Space Telescope will soon begin a massive study of rocky worlds outside the solar system, specifically to discover if planets orbiting closely to small cool stars could have air.
Scientists plan to start with LTT 1445 Ac and GJ 3929 b, and though those exoplanets might not be household names, they are tantalizing subjects, relatively near Earth in space. Each was discovered two years ago using NASA‘s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite while conducting a survey of thousands of stars.
LTT 1445 Ac is roughly the size of Earth and about 22 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. The planet orbits the star LTT 1445 A, part of a trio of red dwarf stars. GJ 3929 b is slightly larger and heavier than Earth, located about 52 light-years away in the constellation Corona Borealis.
These two worlds are just the initial targets of a campaign that will take a closer look at a dozen nearby-ish planets over the next two years. The program, first reported by Mashable, will budget about 500 hours for observation with the Webb telescope, along with about 250 orbits of ultraviolet observations with the Hubble Space Telescope to help characterize the host stars’ activity.
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