No thick carbon dioxide atmosphere on the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c

Seven rocky planets orbit the nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, providing a unique opportunity to search for atmospheres on small planets outside the Solar System¹. Thanks to the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), possible atmospheric constituents such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) are now detectable^2,3. Recent JWST observations of the innermost planet TRAPPIST-1 b showed that it is most probably a bare rock without any CO₂ in its atmosphere⁴. Here we report the detection of thermal emission from the dayside of TRAPPIST-1 c with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on JWST at 15 µm. We measure a planet-to-star flux ratio of f_p/f_⁎ = 421 ± 94 parts per million (ppm), which corresponds to an inferred dayside brightness temperature of 380 ± 31 K. This high dayside temperature disfavours a thick, CO₂-rich atmosphere on the planet. The data rule out cloud-free O₂/CO₂ mixtures with surface pressures ranging from 10 bar (with 10 ppm CO₂) to 0.1 bar (pure CO₂). A Venus-analogue atmosphere with sulfuric acid clouds is also disfavoured at 2.6σ confidence. Thinner atmospheres or bare-rock surfaces are consistent with our measured planet-to-star flux ratio. The absence of a thick, CO₂-rich atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1 c suggests a relatively volatile-poor formation history, with less than 9.5_−2.3^+7.5 Earth oceans of water. If all planets in the system formed in the same way, this would indicate a limited reservoir of volatiles for the potentially habitable planets in the system.