Jonathan Lunine
Interdisciplinary Scientist,
University of Arizona, Tuscon
Date: Spring 2002

The James Webb Space Telescope will actually be able to provide all the details on how planets form. I will be able to study, in the mid-infrared, the disks out of which planets form in the course of star formation. It will be possible to track potentially the position of planets and the effect of planets on those disks. We’ll be able to measure the chemistry of those disks where the ices are located and then we’ll be able to look as well, with the telescope, at giant planets around other stars; something of their properties. We’ll then be able to go to our own solar system and look at the very faintest objects in our solar system and look at those compositions, compare those to disks around other stars, and essentially put together, from the chemical and physical clues, all the steps that go from star formation to the presence of at least giant planets around other stars.

Now, given that and given the fact that giant planets have a very important effect on the stability of terrestrial planets, the supply of water on terrestrial planets, and so on, that will tell us something about the fraction of systems, potential systems, that might be habitable if they have terrestrial planets. And from that point on, then, it will be the next step to eventually look for terrestrial planets with other missions.