| |
| | Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Shortening the list of stars that might have planets |
 | | Remarkably, their discovery gives astronomers a way to determine which other stars in the Galaxy are most likely to harbour planets and allows mission planners to draw up a 'short-list' of stars to be observed by ESA's future planet-search missions, Eddington and Darwin. |
 | | However, at great distances from the star, the gas and dust is sparse and can coalesce only into a vast band of small, icy bodies. |
 | | The only explanation is that the star has planets, comets, asteroids or other bodies that collide and generate the dust," says Malcolm Fridlund, ESA's study scientist for Darwin, the mission under development to search for life-supporting planets around other stars. |
| spaceflightnow.com /news/n0202/16shortlist (1523 words) |
|