M Star Planet Habitability

摘要

Current findings with regard to the planetary population in our Galaxy indicate that giant planets do exist outside our Solar System and, indeed, are fairly common. A concentrated research effort for the detection of Uranus-class and terrestrial planets after 2006 with CoRoT (CNES), Kepler (NASA), SIM (NASA), and GAIA (ESA) is underway. ESA and NASA are currently working up a roadmap that will lead to a strong precursor science program by which the Darwin/ Terrestrial Planet Finder missions will empirically examine terrestrial planets in terms of their origin, physical characteristics, the evolution of their atmospheres and water inventories, and long-time habitability. Although these missions will launch in the next decade, the basic decisions for their interferometer/coronagraph designs have to be made in the near future. One main question these missions must address is which star types (M, K, G, and F) may be good, or preferred, candidates in the search for habitable planets?