ByAndrew Jonespublished1 day ago

If approved for funding, the telescope will launch in 2026.

An artist’s depiction of a collection of exoplanets.(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

China could soon begin its first space-based hunt for exoplanets, if a proposal from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO) gets the go-ahead this summer.

The Earth 2.0 Telescope would spend four years orbiting sun-EarthLagrange point2, about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) fromEarth. There, it would fixed its seven telescopes on a portion of the sky toward the galactic center and watch for signs of dimming as planets transit, or pass in front of, a star as they orbit.

The main targets are roughly Earth-sizeexoplanetswith similar orbits around sun-like stars. This requires high sensitivity to spot the signals of small-planet transits, as well as long-term monitoring to glimpse planets that take an Earthly year to go around their star.