China plans first Earth observation mission to search for Earth-like exoplanet

Following the mission of a robot to the Moon, its landing on Mars and the ongoing gradual creation of its own space station around the Earth, China is extending its space ambitions to other solar systems. This month its scientists will present detailed drawings for the first space mission of the country to search for exoplanets with characteristics similar to those of our own planet, which is why the mission is called “Earth 2.0”.

The main mission of the mission will be to search other areas of our galaxy to find the first planet like Earth located in the “hospitable” zone of its star, with liquid water, rocky surface and other conditions conducive to the development of life (at least based on earthly criteria). More than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to date, and most were discovered by the now-inactive Kepler space telescope. Some of them have similarities, but none of them exactly fit the designation “Earth 2.0”, ie it looks like a twin with planet us.

China hopes to achieve this. Funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it will build an exoplanet hunter satellite, which will be launched by the end of 2026. The satellite observatory will have seven small telescopes that will observe the sky together for four years, according to Nature magazine. “.

The use of multiple collaborating small telescopes is expected to provide a wider field of view and better results than a single large telescope such as the NASA “Kepler”. The Chinese Space Observatory will be able to observe about 1.2 million stars in an area of ​​the sky five times as large as Kepler, and will also be able to see fainter and farther stars than the current TESS space telescope ( Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) also by NASA.

Overall, “our satellite may be 10-15 times more powerful than NASA’s Kepler telescope in terms of its ability to observe the sky,” said astronomer Jian Ge, head of the mission to the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He said he was optimistic that the Earth 2.0 mission would discover several Earth-type exoplanets.

The international astronomical community is looking to combine existing data from Kepler and future data from the Chinese Observatory to confirm which exoplanets look more like Earth. The Chinese delegation already employs about 300 scientists and engineers, mostly Chinese, but is open to astronomers from other countries. “Earth 2.0 is an opportunity for better international astronomical cooperation,” Ge said.

In addition to China, the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch in 2026 the PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars) space observatory, which will have 26 small telescopes and will have even greater capabilities than the Chinese observatory.

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