Atmospheric Hazes of M-dwarf Temperate Planets

We’ve begun to perform laboratory experiments to investigate the habitability of temperate exoplanets around M-dwarf stars. This set of experiments allows us to obtain the rate of haze production and measure the physical and chemical properties of the haze produced in an atmospheric chamber, which simulates the high energy radiation environment of planets hosted by M-dwarf stars. We next implement our laboratory results into a computational model for planetary atmospheres in M-dwarf systems, with the goal of understanding the effect of such hazes on the current habitability and past and future evolution for such planets. These experiments provide fundamental data in a novel planetary temperature and composition range which will only be increasingly populated as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite continues to discover additional worlds. The experiments are aimed at furthering NASA's goal of characterizing nearby exoplanets and will focus on one of NASA's guiding scientific questions: Are we alone?