Project
NASA's planned flagship telescope to directly image Earth-like exoplanets and assess their habitability, envisioned for launch in coming decades.
Researchers from over a dozen institutions simulated Earth-mass planets in 70 Ophiuchi and found stable habitable-zone orbits over 10 million years. The same radial-velocity data exclude Jupiter-mass-or-larger planets out to about 5 AU from the primary star.
Reality
UC Riverside simulations find an Earth-mass planet could orbit stably in the habitable zone of 70 Ophiuchi's larger star, about 5 parsecs away. A stable orbit is the first test a habitable world must pass, so the result tells planet hunters where in this pair to look.
Reality
Astronomers led by the University of Michigan ruled out planets of Jupiter's mass or more within 5 AU of 70 Oph A and 0.5 AU of 70 Oph B. The nearby binary remains a candidate target for future habitable-planet observatories, now with a measured limit on giants in its inner regions.
Reality
Eleanor Cornish and Tyler Robinson put a wind-roughened ocean into the rfast atmospheric tool and found the specular flash still separable from a dry planet at 120 degrees, ten degrees below earlier estimates.
Reality
The telescope's first proposal round came back twelvefold oversubscribed. Hubble and Webb have posted the same result for years: the figure describes how much telescope time exists, not Roman's standing in particular.
Reality
The experimental instrument riding alongside Roman's survey camera carries the first deformable mirrors NASA has flown, and its science teams have pre-committed to a test that tells them whether the fault is theirs.
Reality