NASA is set to scan hundreds of the nearest exoplanets in search for alien life.
The American agency has announced a new partnership with SETI scientists leading the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project.
Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellites (TESS), the team will identify anomalies in the stellar ‘light curves’ and listen for ‘technosignatures’, both of which are indicators of advanced alien civilizations.
The partnership between NASA and SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) was announced today at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, DC.
Dr. S. Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, said, ‘It’s exciting that the world’s most powerful SETI search, with our partner facilities across the globe, will be collaborating with the TESS team and our most capable planet-hunting machine.’
We’re looking forward to working together as we try to answer one of the most profound questions about our place in the Universe: Are we alone?’
Breakthrough Listening will have access to some of the most advanced observatories on Earth during this mission, including Parkes and Green Bank radio telescopes, MeerKAT and the SETI Institute’s Allen telescope array.
The captured data will be analyzed for ‘technosignatures’, which are created by technologies of advanced civilizations and come in different forms such as radio waves, transmitters and propulsion devices.
Researchers will also be on the lookout for anomalies in the stellar ‘light curves’ TESS collects, as such oddities could be caused by orbiting megastructures built by advanced civilizations.
And the organization already has its eyes on a few targets – specifically interstellar visitors Oumuamua and Borisov.
Dr. Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team said ‘The discovery by the Kepler spacecraft of Boyajian’s Star, an object with wild, and apparently random, variations in its lightcurve, sparked great excitement and a range of possible explanations, of which megastructures were just one.’