HONG KONG: Twinkle is a planned satellite that will seek out Earth-like and other types of exoplanets, examining their atmospheres and providing scientists with new insights into their formation, chemistry and evolution, says a team of scientists from University College London.
The satellite will be launched within the next four years, and the mission will be led by UCL and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., a University of Surrey spin-off company that is now fully owned by satellite maker EADS Astrium.Lead scientist, Prof Giovanna Tinetti of UCL, said:
“Twinkle is a very ambitious mission. Nearly two thousand exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our Sun – have been discovered to date, but we know very little about these alien worlds. We can measure their mass, density and distance from their star.”
“From that, we can deduce that that some are freezing cold, some are so hot that they have molten surfaces, some are vast balls of gas, like Jupiter, or small and rocky, like Earth. But beyond that, we just don’t know…”
“Twinkle will be the first mission dedicated to analysing exoplanets atmospheres, and will give us a completely new picture of what these worlds are really like.”
When exoplanets pass in front of the star they are orbiting, a small quantity of starlight is filtered through the clouds and molecules in their atmosphere.
