Alien planets could shed light on earth's climate future
Baku, September 27, AZERTAC
A Comparative Climatology Symposium held at NASA Headquarters on May 7 focused on new approaches to climate research by highlighting the similarities and contrasts between the environments of the rocky worlds Venus, Earth, Mars and Saturn’s smoggy moon Titan.
According to Space.com, the symposium also included discussions about exoplanets, the sun and past, present and future space missions.
John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to make important observations of the atmospheres of exoplanets.
He said JWST won’t be able to locate the exoplanets, only study them, but the recently selected TESS mission could act as a planet scout for JWST targets. It is estimated that TESS will discover around 300 "super-Earth" alien planets, many of them in the habitable zone.
But the number one challenge, Grunsfeld noted, is figuring out the climate of our own planet.
Jim Green, NASA’s Planetary Science Division Director, said that one goal is to examine a variety of planetary bodies as a system, to see if there are trends or similarities. He also pointed out that from a planetary scientist’s perspective, climate change on our planet is not a new thing.
"Earth’s climate has done nothing but change," Green said.
Green said that three Earth-observing satellites will be launched this year, and they will help us better understand how the climate is currently changing and the implications that has for our planet’s environment.
David Grinspoon, holder of the first Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress chair in Astrobiology, talked about Mars’ "ferocious and interesting" meteorology, and how Martian global dust storms may help unravel what happened on our planet during the K-T extinction 65 million years ago, when an asteroid hitting the Yucatan Peninsula is thought to have eradicated 75 percent of animals and plants on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
Other news in this section
