Earth’s Cousins: Upcoming Missions to Look for ‘Biosignatures’ in the Atmospheres of Nearby Worlds

Primary Investigator for the Virtual Planetary Lab research group, Professor Victoria Meadows, gave an invited presentation this past weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held in Seattle.

Her presentation, titled “Extrasolar Terrestrial Planet Characterization and the Search for Life”, described how innovative computer models are being used to simulate the environments and spectra of plausible extrasolar terrestrial environments, and how those models help inform the search for habitable planets and life.

Prior to her presentation Prof. Meadows sat down with UW News correspondent, James Urton, and discussed what upcoming observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will be able to tell us about the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets.

You can read their full discussion in the UW News article here.