China planning to hunt Earth-like habitable planets in first-of-its-kind mission: Report

As the space race between the US and China is picking up its pace, Beijing is now planning to launch a mission dedicated to searching for habitable Earth-like exoplanets- planets outside our solar system. If it gets launched, the project named Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES) would be the first-ever mission to hunt habitable exoplanets around sun-like stars. Ji Jianghui, the principal investigator of the CHES project and a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that it will answer the fundamental question- "Are we alone in the universe?"

"The discovery of the nearby habitable worlds will be a great breakthrough for humankind, and will also help humans visit those Earth twins and expand our living space in the future", Ji said as per the China Global Television Network (CGTN).

Objectives of project CHES

Under this project, scientists will observe around 100 sun-like stars located 32 light-years away and each of them will be observed 50 times with the hope to find at least 50 Earth-like planets. These observations will reportedly be conducted using a 1.2-meter-aperture optical space telescope which would be deployed at the second Lagrangian point (L2), the current location of the James Webb Space Telescope. This location has been chosen because it is gravitationally stable with a stable level of thermal radiation. Besides, this would enable the telescope to function for a longer period with very little fuel expenditure. 

The telescope will be placed in this orbit for an operational period of five years and will provide high-resolution imagery of the exoplanets. Apart from Earth-like planets, the astronomers also hope to discover super-Earths, which have mass ten times greater than the Earth but lighter than gas giants such as Neptune. During its observational period, the CHES telescope will collect data on the number, planetary masses and three-dimensional orbits of the exoplanets. 

Notably, the scientists have launched preliminary research for the project but the timeline regarding the launch of the project is unclear. Detailing more about the mission objective, CGTN reported Ji saying that the potential studies of the exoplanets will provide a deeper understanding of the Earth and the solar system's formation and evolution as well as improve our knowledge about the origin of life.