Strategy for the detection and study of other planetary systems and extrasolar planetary materials: 1990-2000

摘要

The recent decades of planetary exploration by spacecraft have centrally influenced perception and understanding of our solar system. But fundamental questions remain, questions of origin and uniqueness that cannot be answered with confidence as long as we are limited by access to just this one example of a solar system. This report addresses a new opportunity in the planetary sciences--to extend our exploration outward to discover and study planetary systems that may have formed or are forming around other stars. In this report, the Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX) concludes that a coordinated program of astronomical observation, laboratory research, and theoretical development aimed toward systematically exploring the solar neighborhood for planets and planetary systems in various stages of evolution around other stars, and understanding the dynamics and origin of whatever may be found, would be a technologically feasible, scientifically exciting, and potentially richly rewarding extension of the study of bodies within the solar system. It has, in fact, already begun. Discoveries of orbiting bodies with masses far below those of the smallest previously known stars have been announced even though these bodies lie at the edge of detectability and await confirmation. Thus, within just the past few years, a provocative and challenging new opportunity has appeared in the planetary sciences--the opportunity to readdress fundamental scientific and intellectual questions of origin by moving beyond the limited knowledge afforded by the single example of our own planetary system to a more general understanding based on the existence (or, conceivably, nonexistence) and character of other evolved systems.