The Key To Unlocking Exoplanet Biosignatures: A UK-led IR Spectrograph for the Habitable Worlds Observatory Coronagraph

The detection of life on rocky exoplanets in the habitable zones of nearby stars would be a paradigm-shifting advance, and it is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. There is no single spectral feature that is an unambiguous sign of life on a given exoplanet.

Instead, the current state-of-the-art approach involves detecting multiple molecular atmospheric features that should not exist together in equilibrium, e.g. simultaneous detection of O₂ and CH₄. Spectra across a wide wavelength (0.3-1.7 μm) range are necessary to cover multiple spectral features per molecule of interest and to contextualise the suite of molecular features detected.

While the US will lead the optical arm of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) coronagraph, a UK-led contribution of a near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) for the infrared arm will ensure UK leadership in the flagship scientific goal of HWO – to search for signatures of life on potentially habitable exoplanets.

Beth Biller, Dan Dicken, Olivier Absil, Raziye Artan, Jo Barstow, Jayne Birkby, Christophe Dumas, Sasha Hinkley, Tad Komacek, Katherine Morris, Lorenzo Pino, Sarah Rugheimer, Colin Snodgrass, Stephen Todd, Vinooja Thurairethinam, Amaury Triaud

Comments: White paper submitted to the UK Space Agency’s initiative “UK Space Frontiers 2035” this https URL
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.09321 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2603.09321v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.09321
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Submission history
From: Beth Biller
[v1] Tue, 10 Mar 2026 07:54:31 UTC (1,344 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09321

Astrobiology, Exoplanet, Astronomy,