The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) I : the science of characterising terrestrial exoplanets and searching for biosignatures

Daniel Angerhausen

ETH Zürich

Studying the atmospheres of a statistically significant number of rocky, terrestrial exoplanets - including the search for habitable and potentially inhabited planets - is one of the major goals of exoplanetary science and possibly the most challenging question in 21st century astrophysics. However, despite being at the top of the agenda of all major space agencies and ground-based observatories, none of the currently planned projects or missions worldwide has the technical capabilities to achieve this goal. In this talk we present new results from the LIFE Mission initiative, which addresses this issue by investigating the scientific potential of a mid infrared nulling interferometer observatory. Here we will focus on the mission's yield estimates, our simulator software as well as various exemplary science cases such as observing Earth- and Venus-twins or searching for phosphine in exoplanetary atmospheres.