It looks like a giant sunflower, but it is nothing more than the design of a new spacecraft being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena (USA).
The object of this spacecraft will be to image rocky planets like Earth around nearby stars. The prototype of the ship, dubbed “Starshade” , will use a display structure that makes it look like a kind of sunflower in space.
Thanks to the Kepler mission, NASA has been able to discover hundreds of exoplanets , some of which are in the habitable zone, so a deeper and more detailed investigation of these planets could make possible the idea of both exploration and future migration. .
The idea is to obtain more accurate information on the size, composition and temperature of exoplanets similar to Earth, which could have the right conditions to host life , that is, they are neither extremely hot nor cold and that the rest of the characteristics are favorable to the appearance of life.
The Starshade spacecraft is designed to take pictures of the planets by blocking out the bright light emitted by its stars. Once launched into space, the space sunflower would separate from the telescope attached to it; It would unfold its petals and move to the ideal position to block the light from the stars in order to be able to properly photograph each of the exoplanets that will be the subject of a more detailed study. For NASA it is only a matter of time before we find a “twin” planet to our own .
