Could Kepler Find Avatars Moon Pandora?
December 17, 2009 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable – and inhabited – alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA’s Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects, habitable moons may soon become science fact. If we find them nearby, a new paper by Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger shows that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor. “If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade,” said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
