6 papers
Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO): Living Worlds Community Working Group: The Search for Life on Potentially Habitable Exoplanets
Giada Arney, Niki Parenteau, Natalie Hinkel +25
The discovery of a biosphere on another planet would transform how we view ourselves, and our planet Earth, in relation to the rest of the cosmos. We now know Earth is one planet a…
NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (NASA-DARES 2025) White Paper -- Habitable Worlds Observatory Living Worlds Science Cases: Research Gaps and Needs
Niki Parenteau, Giada Arney, Eleanora Alei +28
Executive Summary: The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is the first astrophysics flagship mission with a key cross-divisional astrobiology science goal of searching for signs of…
Thin H-dominated Atmospheres as Signposts of Magmatic Outgassing on Tidally-Heated Terrestrial Exoplanets
R. Arora, S. Ranjan, P. Moitra +1
H-dominated terrestrial exoplanets are highly accessible to atmospheric characterization via transmission spectroscopy, but such atmospheres are generally thought to be unstabl…
Wavelength Requirements for Life Detection via Reflected Light Spectroscopy of Rocky Exoplanets
Joshua Krissansen-Totton, Anna Grace Ulses, Maxwell Frissell +21
Searching for signs of life is a primary goal of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). However, merely detecting oxygen, methane, or other widely discussed biosignatures is insuf…
Prebiosignatures with the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO)
Sukrit Ranjan, Danica Adams, Michael Wong +3
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to characterize habitable exoplanets in search of signs of life. However, detectable life may be rare, either because abiogenesis is int…
Testing Origin-of-Life Theories with the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO)
Sukrit Ranjan, Martin Schlecker, Nicholas Wogan +1
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to telescopically constrain the frequency and abundance of biospheres in the solar neighborhood. Origin-of-life theories vary in their p…