The LIFE Space Mission: Finding the Next Living World

The quest to identify habitable environments and atmospheric biosignatures on terrestrial exoplanets is a key frontier of modern astrophysics. The LIFE Space Mission is our definitive response to this challenge. Targeting a launch by 2040, LIFE is designed to characterize the atmospheres of temperate worlds by accessing their mid-infrared (MIR) thermal emission—a critical spectral range for understanding planetary surfaces, climates and atmospheric biosignatures.

By measuring thermal flux directly, LIFE breaks the radius-albedo degeneracy that limits observations in reflected light, providing a precise measurement of a planet's size and effective temperature. The mission's primary objective is to characterize the atmospheres of at least 55 temperate, terrestrial exoplanets orbiting nearby stars (spectral types mid-F to late-M). Operating in the 4—18.5 μm range, LIFE will hunt for the fundamental fingerprints of life including but not limited to O3 and CH4​.

In this talk, I will present the motivation behind the LIFE mission, detail the Science Objectives, and discuss the current Mission Reference Design. I will also highlight ongoing technology developments and the strategic plan to bring this mission from concept to launch. As we move into the next decade of exploration, LIFE represents our most viable path to characterizing the nearest—and potentially inhabited—worlds in our cosmic neighborhood.