The far future of exoplanet direct characterization

TL;DR

This paper discusses the future prospects and challenges of directly characterizing habitable exoplanets over the next century, emphasizing technological advancements and the long timeline before visualizing extraterrestrial life forms.

Contribution

It provides an outlook on the technological and scientific steps needed for exoplanet characterization beyond current missions, highlighting future mission generations and their potential.

Findings

Long timeline before direct imaging of extraterrestrial organisms

Advancements in spectroscopic and imaging techniques are crucial

Future missions will extend over the next 100 years

Abstract

In this outlook we describe what could be the next steps of the direct characterization of habitable exoplanets after first the medium and large mission projects and investigate the benefits of the spectroscopic and direct imaging approaches. We show that after third and fourth generation missions foreseeable for the next 100 years, we will face a very long era before being able to see directly the morphology of extrasolar organisms.