Astrophysics and Exoplanets

Leveraging key institutional technologies and NASA programs, including the planetary mission New Horizons, space researchers at Johns Hopkins APL are investigating exoplanets, stellar phenomena, and cosmic conundrums that are refining our picture of the universe and could even reveal the first signs of life beyond Earth.

APL is home to the Consortium on Habitability and Atmospheres of M-dwarf Planets (CHAMPs), an interdisciplinary research group backed by NASA’s Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) program that is leading the way to isolate the observational methods and planetary characteristics that will best reveal the habitability of rocky exoplanets orbiting the most abundant stars in our galaxy: red M-dwarf stars. Our researchers have been awarded thousands of hours of observation time with NASA’s space telescopes — including the single largest time allocation ever awarded to exoplanet research in the James Webb Space Telescope’s Guest Observers program — in the hunt for a universal “cosmic shoreline” between exoplanets that do and don’t have atmospheres and identify the spectral signatures of molecules in those atmospheres that could indicate or preclude the presence of life.

Looking beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, our researchers are developing new observational methods to better understand the nuclear processes that govern Type Ia supernovas — the brightest stellar explosions in the cosmos — and have repurposed the LORRI instrument on NASA’s New Horizons to answer the cosmic mystery of just how dark space actually is. The teams are leveraging the lab’s decades of spaceflight experience so scientists can actively pursue the development of instruments and missions that will transform science, including a gamma-ray telescope to operate from lunar orbit. They also built and managed NASA’s GUSTO balloon mission, which provided the first comprehensive study of the interstellar medium by examining everything from the formation of stellar nurseries to the eventual destruction of stars.