The search for planets outside our solar system has found more than 6,000 such worlds, known as exoplanets, over the past 30 years. Now the race is on to find Earth-sized temperate planets, understand their atmospheres, and discover any signs of life on them. Powerful NASA missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the future Habitable Worlds Observatory hold the promise of yielding breakthroughs revealing that we’re not alone in the universe.

Learn how astronomers are carrying out this search and what they’ve been finding out along the way. Peter Plavchan, the NASA Landolt Space Mission’s principal investigator and associate professor of physics and astronomy at George Mason University, shares his research on exoplanets, describing how scientists determine their mass and details of their orbits. He also discusses the NASA Landolt mission, slated for launch in 2029, and how it will improve our understanding of exoplanets.

Following the talk and a question-and-answer period, Rob Parks, director of the George Mason Observatory, brings the skies into your living room with remote control of the university observatory, weather permitting.

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