Paper 14145-116
Paper 14145-116
The Life 2.0 Space Mission
5 July 2026 • 17:30 - 19:00 CEST | Room B4-M3
Abstract
The Life 2.0 space mission concept aims to characterize the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets, including Earth-like worlds, in search of biosignatures in the optical. The mission will consist of an array of 900 one-meter space telescopes in Earth orbit, each equipped with a high-throughput (~50%) waveguide-integrated miniature spectrograph (WIMS) and an ultra-low-noise CMOS detector (~0.3 e-). By combining transmission spectra from 900 telescopes, the signal-to-noise of the combined spectrum can reach a similar level as a single 30-meter space telescope, enabling the detection of the faint planetary atmosphere signal, including species such as oxygen, water, ozone; and many other science cases. The array is scalable and mass-producible, enabling low manufacturing and deployment cost for large-scale atmospheric surveys of habitable exoplanets. The mission design and prototype performance will be reported.
Presenter
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (China)
Dr. Jian Ge is a Chair Professor of Astronomy at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the founder and Principal Investigator of the Earth 2.0 space mission. He was a professor of Astronomy at University of Florida in 2004-2020, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University in 2000-2004, a postdoc research staff at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in 1998-2000. He obtained his Ph.D in astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1998 and his BSc in theoretical physics from University of Science and Technology in 1989. He was the PI for the Dharma Planet Survey and the MARVELS survey of the SDSS-III program, the PI for multiple Opt/IR instruments. He pioneered technologies such as silicon immersion gratings, advanced image slicer integral-field optics, and coronagraphic masks. His teams have discovered numerous planets, brown dwarfs, binaries and quasar absorbers.