Detecting habitable exoplanet atmospheres with LIFE, the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets

arXiv:2607.21683 · astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.EP · Submitted 2026-07-23 · Read on arXiv

Sarah Rugheimer, Aiden Weatherbee, James Fecanin, Alistair Glasse, Paul Rimmer, Eleonora Alei, Esther Wang, Marrick Braam, Sascha P. Quanz, Adrian Glauser, Alexander Archibald, Beth Biller, Mark Booth, Tereza Constantinou, Gregory Cooke, Daniel Dicken, Trent Dupuy, Mei Ting Mak, Paul Palmer, Tim Pearce, Vito Squicciarini, Amaury Triaud, Floris van der Tak, Sergey Yurchenko

astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.EP

Submitted: 2026-07-23

Comments: White paper submitted to the UK Space Agency's initiative "UK Space Frontiers 2035" \href{https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-space-frontiers-2035-astro-planetary-and-helio}{link to call}

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The gist: A key goal of astronomers with the next generation telescopes is to detect signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres.

Terminology

Abstract

A key goal of astronomers with the next generation telescopes is to detect signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres. NASA's next flagship is the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). In the context of ESA's Voyage 2050 program, the Senior Committee report prioritises detecting habitable exoplanet atmospheres in the mid-IR. The most suited mission for this is the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) which can detect an even wider range of biosignatures than HWO and at lower concentrations. LIFE is a global science collaboration based out of ETH Z"urich. With the UK's expertise in building infrared instruments we could play a leading role in realising an ambitious European-led mission. Notably, LIFE is able to detect necessary planetary context like surface temperature and pressure, along with a key discriminator molecule for biosignature false positives, methane, which will be much harder or impossible with HWO. Also, LIFE will be able to investigate many of the nearby rocky exoplanets known from radial velocity searches that are inaccessible to HWO due to its limited spatial resolution.

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