“Over the next few years, and ultimately decades, the search for life on exoplanets will fundamentally rely on the detailed characterization of exoplanet atmospheres,” said lead researcher Jacob Lustig-Yaeger of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory at the AAS meeting.“And the first step on this journey is simply to detect the presence of exoplanet atmospheres.”“The search for life on exoplanets will fundamentally rely on the detailed characterization of exoplanet atmospheres.”Even though JWST should be able to detect exoplanet atmospheres, the task remains challenging.Given these conditions, JWST will likely only be able to detect atmospheres of rocky planets orbiting very small stars called red dwarfs, Lustig-Yaeger explained.In the case of the recently discovered exoplanet LHS 475 b, JWST observed two transits (in which the planet passes in front of its host star, causing a temporary and very small dip in the star’s brightness), which both confirmed that the planet was present and allowed the team to work out its radius.And the research demonstrates just how powerful a tool JWST is for learning about exoplanets: “Even though we don’t detect an atmosphere in this case, our measurements meet the sensitivity requirements to be able to detect the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets."