£50m British Space Mission To Study Exoplanets

A group of UK scientists are trying to raise £50m to launch a spacecraft from Surrey to monitor some of the Milky Way's exoplanets.

Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than our sun and there are thought to be tens of billions in the galaxy.

If the funding is raised by University College London, the Twinkle spacecraft will blast into space and examine at least 100 of the planets.

The spacecraft's infrared spectrograph - an advanced type of camera - will be used to map the planets in potentially vivid detail.

By examining the atmospheres of the exoplanets, details of the history of the planet and its ability to sustain life can be gleaned.

The project's lead scientist is Giovanna Tinetti, who worked on the Hubble telescope project.

The group said in a statement: "Knowledge of the chemical composition of exoplanet atmospheres is essential for understanding whether a planet was born in the orbit in which it is currently observed or whether it has migrated from a different part of its planetary system."

Among the exoplanets in the Milky Way are "super Earths" with a mass of up to ten times that of Earth.

Exoplanets cannot be effectively studied from Earth, says Prof Tinetti, because the light filtered through a planet's atmosphere "is only about one ten thousandth of the overall light from the star".