NASA presents information about the astronomy project to map the exploration of nearby planets and orbiting stars. The project consists of a consortium of many institutions to create a space-based optical interferometer, the study of dust clouds around stars, and more. Information about support ground-based programs, supporting space missions, and other details about the project are available.

A brown dwarf star having only 20-50 times the mass of Jupiter is located below and to the left of the bright star GL 229 in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. At the 19 light year distance to GL 229, the 7.7-arcsec separation between the star and the brown dwarf corresponds to roughly the separation between Pluto and the Sun in our Solar System. The goal of the program described in this report is to detect and characterize Earth-like planets around nearby stars where conditions suitable for life might be found. For a star like the Sun located 30 light years away, the appropriate star-planet separation would be almost 100 times closer than seen here for GL 229B. Elachi, Charles and Angel, Roger and Beichman, Charles A. (Editor) and Boss, Alan and Brown, Robert and Dressler, Alan and Dyson, Freeman and Fanson, James and Ftaclas, Chris and Goad, Lawrence and Klein, Mike and Leger, Alain and Lillie, Charles and Peale, Stanton and Peterson, Deane and Reasenberg, Bob and Sandler, David and Shao, Mike and Simon, Richard and Tenerelli, Domenick Jet Propulsion Laboratory PLANETS; SOLAR SYSTEM; INFRARED INTERFEROMETERS; ASTRONOMICAL INTERFEROMETRY; SPACE EXPLORATION; STAR FORMATION; HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE; THERMAL RADIATION; INFRARED SPECTRA; RADIAL VELOCITY; ASTRONOMICAL PHOTOMETRY; SPACE MISSIONS; SPATIAL RESOLUTION; ADAPTIVE OPTICS...