Paper:	How to Find a Habitable Planet
Volume:	430, Pathways Towards Habitable Planets
Page:	3
Authors:	Kasting, J. F.
Abstract:	Over 400 extrasolar planets have now been discovered by ground-based methods, especially the radial velocity (RV) method. Most of these planets are much bigger than Earth, and only a handful of them are rocky planets that could conceivably harbor life. Within the next few years, we may be able to identify Earth-sized planets within the habitable zones around M stars by looking for transits, and RV techniques may even enable us to find Earths around more Sun-like (F-G-K) stars. To characterize these planets, though, we are likely to need new space-based telescopes that operate either in the visible/near-infrared or in the thermal-IR. Some conceptions of what these telescopes might look like and what we might learn from them are discussed.

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