An ERC project behind the revolutionary discovery announced by NASA about seven temperate terrestrial exoplanets
The discovery of the Trappist-1 system was made in the context of “SPECULOOS” (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing Ultra-cOOl Stars), an ambitious project led by Michaël Gillon (University of Liège, Belgium), supported by a Starting grant from the ERC.
After this first discovery, SPECULOOS aims to detect more systems of this type, thanks to four telescopes currently being installed on the European Southern Observatory of Paranal (ESO) in Chile that will be able to observe more targets than this prototype. According to Dr Gillon, “SPECULOOS, which will observe ten times as much targets and with greater precision, should detect many more, placing itself at the frontline of research into the search for life elsewhere in the Universe”
These results were published by Nature on 23 February 2017.
About the SPECULOOS project:
SPECULOOS: searching for habitable planets amenable for biosignatures detection around the nearest ultra-cool stars
Researcher: Michaël Gillon, Universite de Liège, Belgium
ERC Starting grant running from 2014 to 2018
Funding: EUR 1.96 million
Project website: http://www.speculoos.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_3272698/en/speculoos-portail