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EXOPLANET DISCOVERIES: 

HAVE WE FOUND OTHER EARTHS? 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE & 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2013 

Serial No. 113–27 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

CHRIS STEWART, Utah 

VACANCY 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

MARK TAKANO, California 

ROBIN KELLY, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

HON. STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi, Chair 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

CHRIS STEWART, Utah 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH

HON. LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana, Chair 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Thursday, May 9, 2013 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Written statement by Representative Steven M. Palazzo, Chairman, Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 9 

Written statement by Representative Donna Edwards, Ranking Minority 

Member, Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 10 

Written statement by Representative Larry Bucshon, Chairman, Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................................ 11 

Written statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking Minority 

Member, Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, Space, and 

Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ....................................................... 12 

Written statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee 

on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ................ 13 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Laurance Doyle, Principal Investigator, Center for the Study of Life 

in the Universe, SETI 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Dr. John M. Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, 

NASA 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 21 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 24 

Dr. James Ulvestad, Director, Division of Astronomical Sciences, National 

Science Foundation 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 30 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 32 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 38 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Laurance Doyle, Principal Investigator, Center for the Study of Life 

in the Universe, SETI .......................................................................................... 52 

Dr. John M. Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, 

NASA ..................................................................................................................... 62 

Dr. James Ulvestad, Director, Division of Astronomical Sciences, National 

Science Foundation .............................................................................................. 81 
Page

IV 

Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record 

NASA Exoplanet Missions Graphic submitted by Dr. John M. Grunsfeld, 

Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA ......................... 96 
(1) 

EXOPLANET DISCOVERIES: 

HAVE WE FOUND OTHER EARTHS? 

THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2013 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE & 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Steven Palazzo 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space] presiding. 
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Chairman PALAZZO. This joint hearing of the Subcommittee on 

Space and the Subcommittee on Research will come to order. 

Good morning, and welcome to today’s joint hearing titled 

‘‘Exoplanet Discoveries: Have We Found Other Earths?’’ In front of 

you are packets containing the written testimony, biographies and 

Truth in Testimony disclosures for today’s witnesses. 

Before we get started, since this is a joint hearing involving two 

Subcommittees, I want to explain how we will operate procedurally 

so all Members understand how the question-and-answer period 

will be handled. As always, we will alternate between the majority 

and minority members. We will recognize those Members present 

at the gavel in order of seniority on the full Committee and those 

coming in after the gavel will be recognized in order of arrival, and 

because of today’s vote schedule, everybody, both minority and majority Members, have decided we are going to submit our opening 

statements for the record, which will allow us to proceed directly 

to our witnesses’ testimony. 

[The information follows:] 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE CHAIRMAN STEVEN PALAZZO

Good morning, and welcome to this hearing. I would like to thank our witnesses 

for being here today to testify about exoplanet research and to share information 

with us about the recent discoveries made by NASA’s Kepler mission. 

I would also like to commend NASA and NSF for working to meet our Committee’s testimony deadlines. I understand that their testimony was late because the 

Office of Management and Budget failed to manage their time and resources wisely. 

In this case, I do not want to hold NASA or NSF responsible for problems in other 

areas of the Administration. 

Today’s hearing topic is an exciting one. As of May 2013, scientists had identified 

roughly 900 confirmed ‘‘exoplanets’’—planets beyond our solar system—and more 

than 2,700 planet candidates. Last month, NASA’s Kepler mission announced that 

it had found three super-Earth sized planets in the ‘‘habitable zone’’ of two stars 

in our galaxy. The ‘‘habitable zone’’ refers the region around stars where planets 

could support liquid water. This discovery has broad implications not only for the 

scientific community, but for all mankind. This research will provide us with a better understanding of the universe and inspire the next generation of scientists and 

engineers. 

NASA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 budget allocates roughly $41million for exoplanet 

research, while the FY 2014 budget request is $55 million. This amount includes 

funding for the extension of the Kepler mission and NASA’s partnership with the 

Keck Observatory used for all NASA astrophysics science programs. 

According to Dr. Laurance Doyle, one of our witnesses today, exoplanet research 

was not as popular when he entered the field 30 years ago as it is today. Now there 

are at least several thousand astronomers and astrophysicists around the world applying the transit method, like the one used by the Kepler mission, to detect and 

study extra-solar planets. In addition to the Kepler mission, the agency is planning 

to use future missions to further exoplanet research, including the James Webb 

Space Telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, and the newly announced Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is expected to study 

the nearest bright stars and potentially discover thousands of new planets. 

I look forward to hearing about NASA and NSF’s plan for continuing exoplanet 

research using these unique capabilities. Additional discoveries will no doubt accompany the development of these capabilities, which will in turn inspire new astronomers and astrophysicists. 

I am also interested in understanding how the government can increase cooperation to further leverage our investments. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory 

Committee’s (AAAC) Exoplanet Task Force and the National Academies have issued 

recommendations and roadmaps to guide future investigations. As the Academies 

notes in their recent decadal survey, ‘‘[t]he search for exoplanets is one of the most 

exciting subjects in all of astronomy.’’ The report went on to recommend ‘‘a program 

to explore the diversity and properties of planetary systems around other stars, and 

to prepare for the long-term goal of discovering and investigating nearby, habitable 

planets.’’ 

The AAAC’s Exoplanet Task Force issued a report in 2008 that posed the following questions regarding exoplanets: Do Earth-like planets exist; are they common; and do they show signs of habitability or biosignatures? These are complex 

questions that the National Academies’ decadal survey argues will ultimately require a dedicated space mission to answer. However, that same decadal survey went 

on to state that ‘‘it is too early to determine what the design of that space mission 

should be, or even which planet-detection techniques should be employed. It is not 

even clear whether searches are best carried out at infrared, optical, or even ultraviolet wavelengths.’’ 

As we strive to do more with less, I hope we will get a better understanding of 

how exoplanet research should adapt to the fiscal realities we face today. Is the current portfolio of missions and research still the ideal path under constrained budgets? How can we build upon recent inspirational discoveries in the most efficient 

manner? These are key questions we must answer as we work to draft a NASA Authorization Bill and a Reauthorization of COMPETES Act. 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

RANKING MINORITY MEMBER DONNA EDWARDS

Good afternoon and welcome to our distinguished panel of witnesses. 

The news coming out of NASA a few weeks ago was both surprising yet not unexpected. NASA’s Kepler space telescope had found Earth-sized and super-Earth sized 

planets. That was not unexpected as Kepler is doing a fantastic job at discerning 

these faint objects. 

What was tantalizing is that this particular detection included three super-Earthsize planets in the ′′habitable zone,′′ the range of distance from a star where the 

surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water to exist. 

I say tantalizing because this finding means we are making progress in answering 

the fundamental questions of where do we come from and whether we are alone in 

the Universe. NASA and the National Science Foundation have exciting exoplanet 

research both underway and planned that will help us gain further insight into 

those questions. 

Unfortunately, as we will hear this morning, addressing those questions will take 

time and resources; two things that are hard to come by in this difficult budgetary 

environment. 

In particular, NASA is somewhat hamstrung in starting a new large mission in 

astrophysics until it is closer to launching the James Webb Space Telescope, currently slated for 2018. And NSF’s ability to support a growing number of grant requests focused on exoplanet research is threatened by relatively flat funding and the 

need to maintain currently operating facilities. 

I hope that today’s hearing will shed light on the exciting potential of NASA and 

NSF exoplanet activities as well as the challenges these agencies face in getting 

there. 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

CHAIRMAN LARRY BUCSHON

Since humanity first began looking to the heavens, we have been fascinated by 

the possibility that we may not be alone in the universe. We dreamt of worlds far 

away, but not unlike our own, long before the first exoplanet was discovered by researchers funded by the National Science Foundation in 1992. The National Science 

Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences has continued to play a crucial role 

in furthering these discoveries, providing funds to help build and operate groundbased telescopes used for exoplanet discovery and observation. 

As the number of confirmed and cataloged heavenly bodies has swelled in the past 

twenty one years, we have sought to learn more about the conditions on these planets: the temperatures, the atmospheres, their core composition, how they orbit their 

respective stars, and ultimately, whether any are capable of sustaining life. We will 

hear from our witnesses today about ‘‘habitable zones,’’ the distance from a star that 

creates conditions hospitable to life. We believe that 50 out of the 2700 exoplanet 

candidates identified by NASA’s Kepler mission exist in the ‘‘goldilocks’’ zone, neither too hot nor too cold, and potentially just the right temperature to allow life to 

flourish. Just last month, the Kepler mission released the details of three ‘‘superEarth’’ sized planets in the habitable zone. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses regarding their suggestions for the next steps in studying these super-Earth 

sized planets in particular, as well as surveying for additional exoplanets. 

I would like to highlight the important contributions to life sciences research in 

space of two individuals affiliated with Purdue University back in my home state 

of Indiana. Dr. France Cordova, President Emerita of Purdue University is the 

Chairman of the Board of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, 

which manages the National Laboratory aboard the International Space Station. Dr. 

Marshall Porterfield, currently on leave from Purdue, is the Director of NASA’s 

Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division. At Purdue, he 

is a professor of agriculture and biological engineering, as well as co-director of the 

Physiological Sensing Facility, which fosters interdisciplinary engagement between 

bioscientists and engineers to drive sensor development and application. We are all 

very grateful for their service to our nation, and I am very pleased to know that 

their work will benefit not only the astronauts and scientists of today, but the students of Purdue University who will be studying these complex problems in the 

years to come. 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

RANKING MINORITY MEMBER DANIEL LIPINSKI

Thank you Chairmen Palazzo and Bucshon for holding this hearing and thank 

you to the witnesses for being here. I will keep this brief. 

The search for habitable planets outside of our own solar system was identified 

as a scientific priority in the 2010 National Academies Decadal Survey of Astronomy 

and Astrophysics. And no wonder. This is exactly the type of scientific pursuit that 

expands our understanding of the world, or worlds, around us and grips the imagination of scientists and the public at large, even though we have no idea what we 

will find. 

Exoplanet research is also a good example of an area of science that receives support from more than one federal agency. In this case, NASA and NSF have overlapping science goals, but very different tools with which to pursue those goals. As a 

result, the data and findings generated by NASA’s space-based instruments may 

map directly onto data and findings generated by NSF’s ground-based instruments, 

permitting the kind of replication that drives scientific discovery forward. I could 

also note that the recent paper describing the new exoplanet that was found in a 

so-called habitable zone was co-authored by a researcher being funded by an NSF 

CAREER award, which funds early career researchers. I look forward to hearing 

more about the scientific opportunities made possible by current and future instruments at both agencies. 

The collaboration between NSF and NASA on astronomy and astrophysics research appears overall to be strong and productive. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee, which was established by Congress in the 2002 NSF 

Reauthorization Act to address structural problems in interagency collaboration that 

were a real concern 10 years ago, have been very positive in their assessments in 

more recent years. 

At the same time, both NASA and NSF have been under budgetary constraints 

that have hampered progress in astronomy and many other fields of science, even 

as the quantity and quality of proposals continues to increase. I’d like to hear from 

the agency representatives how you are dealing with these funding challenges for 

exoplanet research specifically and astronomy more generally, and any other challenges you may be facing. 
13 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY

CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH

Thank you Chairman Palazzo and Chairman Bucshon for holding this hearing. I 

also want to thank the witnesses for being here to share their expertise on this 

topic. 

Space exploration is an investment in our nation’s future—often the distant future. It encourages innovation and improves Americans’ quality of life. I don’t know 

if space is the final frontier, but I believe it is the next frontier. 

The search for exoplanets and Earth-like planets is a relatively new but inspiring 

area of space exploration. Scientists are discovering new kinds of solar systems in 

our own galaxy that we never knew existed. 

The discovery of Earth-like planets will open up new opportunities for American 

astronomers and explorers. Some experts predict that many more planets will be detected soon. And some of these planets could even contain the first evidence of organic life outside of Earth. 

Imagine how the discovery of life outside our solar system would alter our priorities for space exploration and how we view our place in the universe. 

Today we will hear where we are in our search. And what comes next in our study 

of these newly discovered planets. The U.S. already has undertaken a number of 

initiatives. 

Cooperation between NASA’s space-based telescopes, like the Kepler mission, and 

ground-based telescopes funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF), 

has enabled astronomers to expand their star gazing capabilities. Also, next year 

construction will begin on the new NSF funded Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in 

Chile. 

In addition to its many other capabilities, this telescope will essentially take a 10- 

year time lapse photo of the universe. The data collected from the telescope will help 

astronomers confirm the existence and types of exoplanets in our solar system. 

The James Webb Space Telescope will use both transit spectroscopy and direct imaging to determine the make-up of exoplanet systems in our galaxy. This is an exciting time in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. I look forward to hearing our 

witnesses’ perspectives on these issues. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my time. 
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Chairman PALAZZO. Now I will introduce our panel of witnesses. 

Our first witness is Dr. Laurance Doyle, the Principal Investigator 

for the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI 

Institute. Our second witness is Dr. John Grunsfeld, the Associate 

Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration. And our final witness is Dr. 

James Ulvestad, Director of the Division of Astronomical Sciences 

at the National Science Foundation. Previously, he was the Assistant Director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He 

served in various capacities at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he played an important role in several interagency and 

international programs. 

As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited to 

five minutes each after which Members of the Committee have five 

minutes each to ask questions. Your written testimony will be included in the record of the hearing. 

I now recognize our first witness, Dr. Doyle, for five minutes for 

his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. LAURANCE DOYLE, 

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, 

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE, 

SETI INSTITUTE 

Dr. DOYLE. Thank you for inviting me. It is an honor to be here. 

My work in extrasolar planet research stretches back about 30 

years, which is a decade before the first extrasolar planets were actually discovered. At that time there were only two other people in 

the world working on the transit method, John Schneider and William Borucki, who is the PI of Kepler. The transit method involves 

the detection of a planet as it orbits in front of its star. In other 

words, one could say that one is detecting the shadow of the planet. 

Today there are thousands of astrophysicists and their students 

working using the transit method to study and detect extrasolar 

planets. 

In the early years of this research, I was able to identify three 

methods for detecting extrasolar planets. In the 1990s I directed an 

international network of telescopes to search for circumbinary planets. As a participating scientist with Kepler, I have been able to 

collaborate with the eclipsing binary working group in the discovery of several thousands of new eclipsing binaries. These are 

stars that orbit in front of each other, and if they are in the background of an extrasolar planet, they can look like the transit of a 

planet, so you have to catalog all the eclipsing binaries. 

My main work, though, as a participating scientist with Kepler 

has been the detection of circumbinary planets, that is, planets 

that orbit around two stars at the same time. This was—the first 

transiting circumbinary planet was discovered in 2011, and it was 

called Kepler-16b. We began calling this planet Tatooine, because 

the Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker was watching a double sunset. 

And what we didn’t know is someone called George Lucas and 

asked him if we could nickname it Tatooine and he sent the Director of Industrial Light and Magic to the NASA press conference. So 

basically worldwide press picked up this as ‘‘Tatooine discovered,’’ 

but it was a great example of science fiction turning into science 
15 

fact. And I like to think it had inspired many students worldwide 

to study math and science so they could turn science fiction into 

science themselves someday. 

In the context of the search for life in the universe, the Kepler 

mission has already made a huge contribution. At the SETI Institute, we have scientists working on all aspects of detection of life 

in the universe, including robotic landing missions and radio telescope searches. About 50 SETI Institute scientists are currently 

working on the Kepler mission. For about 50 years, SETI astronomers could only target stars. Now that Kepler has discovered the 

frequency of planets, we now can actually target planets that we 

know to be in the habitable zone of their stars. This is a huge step 

as far as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. 

The next step in detecting life in the universe will be most likely 

to find biomarkers in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. An example of this is oxygen, which is highly indicative of photosynthetic 

systems like forests, seaweed, microflora and so on. Taking a remote spectra of the Earth, the detection of oxygen would be indicative of plant life, possibly animal life, and maybe even intelligent 

life. So, it could be that the first detection of extraterrestrial life 

will be forests. 

Finally, to answer the question that is the title of this session, 

’’Have we found other Earths?’’ we know that the best candidate to 

date is Kepler-62f, but it is also 1.4 times the Earth’s radius. It 

may be slightly too big to recycle its atmosphere with plate tectonics, but we don’t know for sure. A lot of modeling still has to 

take place. So I would say the safe answer to the question is ‘‘almost.’’ 

Within the next few years, Kepler will likely be able to detect exactly Earth-size planets. To put this in perspective, 2,400 years 

ago, the ancient Greek philosopher, Metrodorus of Chios wrote this: 

‘‘To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite 

space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with 

millet, only one grain will grow.’’ Within the next few years we will 

have the privilege of finding the actual answer to this age-old question: ‘‘In the universe, is there another place like home?’’ I think 

with the Kepler mission, we are just on the verge of answering 

‘‘yes.’’ 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Doyle follows:] 
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Chairman PALAZZO. I now recognize our next witness, Dr. 

Grunsfeld. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN M. GRUNSFELD, 

ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, 

SCIENCE MISSION DIRECTORATE, NASA 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, 

thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you 

today to discuss what I consider an incredibly exciting subject: 

extrasolar planets. As you have just heard, or exoplanets, which 

are defined as planets orbiting stars other than our own sun. 

As a young boy growing up in Chicago, I quite often laid on the 

grass at night looking up at the stars wondering is anybody out 

there, and even explicitly, are there planets around any of these 

stars. This wonder about the universe and the question of whether 

there are exoplanets helped to drive me into a career in science and 

engineering, ultimately to become an astronaut and now the head 

of Science Mission Directorat at NASA. 

NASA plays a key leadership role in the quest to discover and 

characterize distant exoplanets and search for life in the universe. 

We work with a variety of space-based and ground-based telescopes 

and in concert with the National Science Foundation and our international partners in observatories around the world. 

Since the first exoplanet discoveries in the 1990s, over 900 

exoplanets have been discovered. There is an app on your 

smartphone you can check daily if you are really curious, and in 

just the last four years the Kepler mission has contributed over 122 

confirmed exoplanets and has over 2,700 candidates most of which 

will probably turn out to be real exoplanets. 

Thanks to the Kepler mission, the statistics suggest that when 

you look up at the night sky, outside of the District, of course, because it is hard to see very many stars, virtually all of those stars 

have planets. At least one planet and perhaps a whole solar system 

around them. Even more exciting is the more commons star in our 

galaxy, an M-class star. About 15 percent, or one in six of those 

stars, has a rocky planet in the habitable zone, and that is what 

Kepler has told us, if the statistics hold out more generally. 

The Kepler team recently announced the discovery of rocky planets a little bigger than the Earth around their host stars and one 

of which, Kepler-69c, around a star very much like our own sun. 

The nearest habitable exoplanet, habitable meaning liquid water 

could exist on its surface, may be as close as 15 light-years away. 

When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, no exoplanets 

had been found and we had nine planets in our own solar system, 

now eight. Since then, the Hubble has not only directly imaged 

solar systems, one with three planets, but it has also measured the 

components of the atmosphere around one of those planets. Along 

with Kepler and Hubble, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the NASA 

Keck ground-based telescope in Hawaii and many other groundbased telescopes are contributing to the rapid pace of discovery in 

this exciting field. 

In 2018, we will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, and 

that will give us a big leap in capability and our ability to study 

exoplanets. When we started designing the James Webb Space Tel-
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escope, again, we had not yet discovered any exoplanets. But its infrared capability, the fact that it has a coronagraph and its ability 

to take the spectrum of the light from these exoplanets will really 

tell us a lot about the atmospheres and the components of those 

systems. 

But even before James Webb Space Telescope, we are going to 

launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite just selected as 

part of our Explorer program and it is going to do an all-sky survey 

of the nearest and brightest stars, our neighbors, to see if there 

transiting exoplanets around those stars. With the TESS information, we will be able to target the James Webb Space Telescope, 

also the Atacama Large Millimeter Array sponsored by the National Science Foundation to really learn about these closest neighbors. All these telescopes will work together to answer the basic 

questions about these distant solar systems: determine the size of 

the planets, their mass, their characteristics, their atmosphere, 

their composition. Very exciting work ahead. 

Looking to the future, NASA funds technology development for 

exoplanet research and is studying the use of an existing telescope 

asset you may have heard about that we got from the National Reconnaissance Organization that will have a coronagraph that will 

be able to study the atmosphere of these distant plants in much 

more detail by directing imaging. We are also studying other techniques that will be infused into future telescopes that will be able 

to characterize an Earth-sized planet around a nearby star and 

search for evidence of life beyond our solar system. 

NASA is aware that exoplanets are of great interest to the public, the science community, and they bring together many scientific 

disciplines. That is one of the reasons why all of our data from 

Hubble, Spitzer and Kepler is all made available to the public, and 

this has resulted in an explosion of discoveries well beyond the 

NASA-funded research, including a number of discoveries by citizen scientists. 

In conclusion, NASA has a comprehensive program to detect and 

characterize exoplanets. And with the progress we have already 

made, I am confident that it is not a question of whether or not 

we will find an Earth-like exoplanet but when. With our program, 

the active participation of a rapidly growing scientific community, 

and our partners, we will continue to make major strides forward 

in our understanding of the science of exoplanets, and programs 

like Kepler capture the imagination of everyday people. I think 

that is why you are all here, that you are also interested including 

our students, who will be the scientists and engineers of tomorrow. 

NASA has exciting missions like the Hubble, the James Webb 

Space Telescope, TESS and Kepler to reach even farther back in 

time, to unravel the mysteries of the universe, and to start characterizing and analyzing the atmospheres of exoplanets. The future 

of exoplanet research is bright, and NASA will continue to play a 

leadership role in that future. 

I look forward to your questions, and I have one very short comment, which is, at the end of almost every public presentation I 

make, I have a quotation—it is a quotation from Tennyson that I 

have editorially modified, and it says ‘‘For I dipped into the future 
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as far as human eyes could see, saw the vision of the new worlds 

and all the wonders that would be.’’ Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Grunsfeld follows:] 
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Chairman PALAZZO. I now recognize our final witness, Dr. 

Ulvestad. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JAMES ULVESTAD, DIRECTOR, 

DIVISION OF ASTRONOMICAL SCIENCES, 

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

Dr. ULVESTAD. Good morning, Chairman Palazzo and Chairman 

Bucshon, Ranking Members Edwards and Lipinski, and Subcommittee Members. Thank you for giving NSF the opportunity to 

speak to you today about our support of exoplanet research. 

For millennia, people have looked up in the sky and wondered 

if there is other life out there, if there are other people out there. 

Determining if there were other planets around other stars was 

really something that couldn’t be done for almost 400 years after 

Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens. So when I was in 

graduate school at Maryland in the late 1970s, early 1980s, we 

never would have dreamed that we could be at the place where we 

are now speaking about Earth-like planets. But just 20 years after 

the first detection of planets around other stars, we are now seriously talking about Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of 

other solar systems, which I think is quite spectacular. 

NSF has supported exoplanet research since its infancy. The first 

detections were made actually with NSF’s Arecibo radio telescope 

in 1992 and it was very surprising to find planets around a compact star called a neutron star, which was not where people were 

looking. So I think exoplanet research over the 20 years since then 

has been full of surprises—planets much, much bigger than Jupiter 

very, very close to their stars, and these surprising outcomes have 

totally revamped the way we think about solar systems and the 

way planets form. 

At NSF, the exoplanet research that we fund relies on three critical elements: investigators, that is, people; tools, that is, telescopes; and technology development. So we presently have more 

than 40 active awards to individual investigators who are doing 

exoplanet research, and many of these are people just beginning in 

our field. There are early career awards, there are postdoctoral fellowships, and this field is so exciting that a lot of the young people 

who are going into the field of astronomy actually want to work in 

this area. With our international partners, we provide the groundbased telescopes that complement the space-based telescopes that 

Dr. Grunsfeld has mentioned that are needed to make precision 

measurements of planetary systems. And third, and not to be neglected, we support technology development that is very important 

for getting us to the stage where we can detect planets as small 

as the Earth. For example, we support technology development 

that can be used to get more accurate wavelength standards that 

enable precision measurements of stars to determine motions that 

are being caused by planets with masses as low as the Earth. 

As exoplanet science enters its third decade, we are growing beyond just the counting of planets. Dr. Grunsfeld mentioned more 

than 800 or 900 confirmed planets but now we are funding research at NSF into characterizing planetary properties, into measuring exoplanet atmospheres, and into the formation and evolution 

of planetary systems. Starting next year, a new $25 million instru-
31 

ment on our Gemini telescope in the South will be used to image 

up to 600 other nearby stars, trying to image planets. This instrument cannot image planets right next to the star but out at the distance of Jupiter and beyond. 

Over the last four years, NASA’s Kepler satellite, as mentioned 

previously, has opened these wonderful new opportunities, and just 

to mention the complementary science, some of the recent discoveries have actually been made using Kepler data by investigators 

that NSF funds. We have an NSF early career investigator who 

helped develop the technique that was used to detect these two 

planets, Kepler-62e and f, that are thought to be in the habitable 

zone around Kepler-62. 

We are in the process of completing a very large instrument 

called the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, which was dedicated 

in Chile two months ago, and this, even in its pre-dedication phase, 

has detected the presence of Earth-mass planets around the bright 

star Fomalhaut, which you can see with your naked eye in the 

night sky just 25 light-years away. ALMA will in fact be incredibly 

complementary to the James Webb Space Telescope, with James 

Webb in the near infrared, and with ALMA in the far infrared, 

both imaging dust shells and circumstellar discs around nearby 

stars at approximately the same resolution. As with all of NSF’s 

major facilities, the data acquired with these instruments will be 

available to all investigators, not just to the people who propose to 

get the data. 

One of the key goals of NSF’s strategic plan is to transform the 

frontiers of science and engineering, and we think that since the 

very first exoplanet detections, NSF-funded research has transformed the frontiers of exoplanet research. We will be very interested to see how the frontiers continue to be transformed over the 

next 20 years. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks, and I would be happy 

to answer any questions you and the Subcommittee Members 

might have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Ulvestad follows:] 
32 
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36 
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38 

Chairman PALAZZO. I thank the witnesses for their testimony, reminding Members that Committee rules limit questioning to five 

minutes. The chair will at this point open the round of questions. 

The chair recognizes himself for five minutes. 

Dr. Grunsfeld, the Space Telescope Science Institute indicated 

that a telescope larger than JWST is needed to detect biosignatures 

from terrestrial-like exoplanets. They also indicated that a heavylift launch vehicle such as the Space Launch System is needed to 

launch a telescope this size. How does the development of the SLS 

enable future exoplanet discoveries? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. The Space Launch System, our large rocket in 

development, has the characteristic of course that it can lift heavy 

weights but almost of equal importance for science is that it has 

a very large launch route and so a future telescope that would have 

the light-gathering capability to detect and measure the bioscience, 

if you will, of a very, very dim planet around a very bright star will 

require a lot of collecting area and advanced instrumentation, and 

such a large telescope if you think about how James Webb Space 

Telescope is going to launch, and I know Chairman Smith, you 

have seen the model, that all gets folded up like origami and transformed into a launch route of an Orion V rocket, very big. That is 

about the largest thing we can put into space in a conventional 

rocket. The Space Launch System is transformative and this very 

large launch route would enable us to scale that up to something 

that would be a telescope that could detect life around a nearby 

Earth-like planet. So we are looking very favorably on the development of SLS. 

Chairman PALAZZO. Also, Dr. Grunsfeld, how does NASA plan to 

manage education and public outreach related to exoplanet discoveries in the wake of the proposed reorganization of education and 

outreach funding? Are there any anticipated changes to the education and public outreach strategy? And how would the proposed 

reorganization impact the inspiration of the next generation of explorers? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Well, the first thing that I will say is that the 

critical component in the inspiration of our next generation of explorers, scientists, engineers and even more important, to have a 

very broad educated populace in the scientific method and basic 

science is to do exciting things that produce exciting scientific results that we can then get out into the public domain. That is the 

number one requirement, and on that scale, we are changing nothing. NASA is going to continue working with NSF and the rest of 

the scientific community to try and make exciting discoveries. I 

think when we find a rocky planet around a nearby star that we 

think is very Earth-like, that is going to be incredibly exciting, and 

if we are so lucky to detect life on a planet like that, I think it will 

be transformative to humans here on Earth. 

As far as our NASA education, the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 

proposal to consolidate the science, technology, engineering and 

mathematics education infrastructure from a number of agencies 

into three primary agencies, NASA is part of that plan and so our 

education activities will be transferred and the budget with them 

will be transferred to a combined Department of Education, Smithsonian and National Science Foundation architecture. That plan is 
39 

still in development. Clearly the Administration has as its intention that this will strengthen the STEM education in our country. 

One of the things that I am very proud of is that our science missions and the scientists who do that work spend time currently 

reaching out to master teachers, to pre-service and in-service teachers and all the way through students, and so whatever plan 

emerges from this new reorganization it is critical that we preserve 

that connection with the great science. 

Chairman PALAZZO. And my final question is for Dr. Grunsfeld. 

The National Academies issued their Decadal Survey, New Worlds, 

New Horizons, that laid out the path forward for astronomy and 

astrophysics. How does NASA plan to adapt its plans for 

exoplanets now that we are facing a tougher budgetary environment? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Well, I did bring a graphic. I don’t know if that 

is easily available to come up. We have in our current portfolio of 

exoplanet research, and again, it is all done in concert with National Science Foundation but also private observatories, but we 

use ground-based observatories, currently Hubble, Spitzer and 

Kepler, to investigate exoplanets. So that is our current stable of 

very powerful telescopes, and that is what has allowed us to make 

all this tremendous progress, as well as other ground-based observatories. 

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite was selected out of 

our competitive program but it does advance us quite significantly 

in exoplanet investigations in that it will find all of the closest 

transiting exoplanets, and that will allow us to use both groundbased and space-based observatories to start characterizing the nature of these planets, even down to measuring the atmospheres of 

the planets around these nearby stars. If we find something like an 

Earth, that will allow us to start looking for signs, even with 

James Webb Space Telescope, of water in the atmosphere, and if 

you have water in the atmosphere of a rocky planet in the habitable zone, that means there is probably lakes and clouds and precipitation. That gets us a long way towards that question of could 

there be life. 

Next, of course, is James Webb Space Telescope. The next two 

that are kind of dim are addressing what is in the New Worlds, 

New Horizons, and so the first one is an Astrophysics Focused Telescope Asset. That is just code for a study we are doing, which is 

to use the 2.4-meter optic system that we received from disposition 

of a National Reconnaissance Office asset, and we are looking at 

that as a wide-field telescope that meets the WFirst science requirements and with the addition of a coronagraph, something that 

blocks out the light of the central star, would allow us to study 

nearby exoplanets in greater detail than we could have ever done 

with anything we have currently on the plate. 

Then beyond that, the New Worlds Telescope—that is just how 

it was described in the Decadal Survey—would be this very large 

telescope, something where the James Webb Space Telescope is 6– 

1/2 meter diameter, about 20 feet, in order to actually detect life 

signs, if they are there, of a planet around a relatively nearby star, 

we would probably have to go to 16 or 20 meters in diameter, and 
40 

that is the one that was referenced in your Space Launch System 

question. 

So we have studies going, technology work on prototype detectors 

per those future lines. Given the constrained physical environment, 

we are looking very closely at this NRO asset as a way to bring 

down the cost of doing the next great astrophysics mission. 

Chairman PALAZZO. Thank you, Dr. Grunsfeld. I now recognize 

Ms. Edwards for five minutes. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you very much, and thanks to our witnesses. I have to say, the work that you do is among the most exciting that those of us who are laypeople can think about. It truly 

is, and so thanks so much for everything that you do. 

Dr. Grunsfeld, I want to follow up with your last response, and 

it really does have to do with this constrained fiscal environment 

because a number of the things that each of you has laid out requires an allocation of resources over a period of time for us to get 

on with, if you will. And so I wonder if you can tell me how the 

current budget environment is really affecting exoplanet research 

and the additional technologies that are going to be needed over 

this next decade, and what are the likely impacts if we should continue with sequester into Fiscal Year 2014? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. So there is no question that the budget environment has caused us to have to make some tough choices, and 

whenever we try and make those tough choices, we think about 

balance, we think about scientific priorities, and in the case of 

exoplanets we are very fortunate that we have high-value observatories on orbit, and so one of the things we have to prioritize is 

what are we going to keep operating on orbit providing high scientific return. The latitude we have for adjusting to a changing 

budget is really in the start of new projects, and so as an example, 

even though we have selected the Transiting Exoplanet Survey 

Satellite, TESS, we have had to slow the start of that mission by 

about six months, just what we have seen from this year and looking into Fiscal Year 2014. If we continue into a sequestered environment, then we are going to have to look at perhaps turning off 

an operating observatory or cutting back further on the development of new missions, and something like the study for the NRO 

Asset Telescope, AFTA, you know, we would have to reduce our investment in that future, which would of course slow that down further. 

Now, we haven’t—that is a study. We haven’t approved or come 

to you to ask for approval either. That is not approved internally 

within NASA or externally. We are just looking at the feasibility 

right now on that. But it would slow down future development. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Dr. Ulvestad? 

Dr. ULVESTAD. Yes, I would say there are two primary issues 

that we would have to think about in terms of the constrained fiscal environment. One is that some of the new observatories that I 

spoke about are more expensive to operate than the older observatories that we used to have, and so in a constrained environment, 

in order to operate those new tools, what sometimes has to give in 

the short term is the research grants to individual investigators. As 

an example, I will cite the ALMA Telescope, which we are just 

bringing online, which we expect to be used very strongly in con-
41 

junction with JWST. So I will just mention that. That is actually 

one of the ways that we will maximize the sciences by trying to 

have these space and ground assets work together on coordinated 

programs. But one of the issues that we will run into for ALMA, 

which is an international telescope, is that if we are not able to 

fund our investigators to do the research and to bring their 

postdocs and graduate students in, some of the best exoplanet 

science with that telescope might be done by our international 

partners and not by the U.S. investigators. So I think that is a very 

serious concern for us. 

The concern other than that is just being able to make sure that 

having invested lots of money in these big tools that we are able 

to operate them adequately, that we don’t start doing things like 

scrimping on the infrastructure because we are trying to save a little bit of money here and there and then essentially causing damage to the big investments we have already made. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Well, let me follow that up, because it is one of 

the concerns I have had, for example, with James Webb Space Telescope is that we actually got a lot of extended lifespan out of the 

Hubble because a lot of upgrades were made over a period of time 

and so that gave us a tremendous bang for the buck. But the question is whether if we face future delays into 2018 will we, beyond 

then, be able to get more bang for the buck out of JWST in the 

same way that we did out of Hubble. 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Quite a long time ago, we looked at making the 

James Webb Space Telescope serviceable similar to the Hubble, 

and largely due to the fact that it is an infrared telescope and it 

has to be very, very cold, its design was to put it a million miles 

away from Earth, and that is a very inaccessible place, and so we 

abandoned the idea of visiting it and upgrading it. So the James 

Webb Space Telescope doesn’t have the capability for upgrades the 

way Hubble does. So what determines the James Webb Space Telescope lifetime is really the onboard fuel, and so we have designed 

it to a design requirement of five years. At NASA we have redundancy, we have reserves, you know, we plan for failures and operations. We hope, and actually the engineering says we should get 

11 years of life out of the James Webb Space Telescope in an actual 

operational mode that we think we will use. 

Given that framing, we are looking very closely, and I am very 

excited about the partnership observatories likes the Atacama 

Large Millimeter Array because that is the way we are going to 

maximize the output of the James Webb Space Telescope is by 

using our other assets. I have a little bit of a dream, but that 

dream is that not only will we have the ALMA and the James 

Webb Space Telescope, that we will also have some overlap with 

the Hubble Space Telescope, and engineering mechanics will determine that lifetime but right now Hubble is still doing well. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you. 

Chairman PALAZZO. I now recognize Mr. Bucshon for five minutes. 

Mr. BUCSHON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to make a 

comment first and then a couple of questions. 

This is not the only hearing that we have heard from people who 

depend on so-called discretionary spending at the Federal level, 
42 

and my comment is, is that until the American people can help us 

address the entire piece of the Federal spending pie, of which 60 

percent we are not addressing today in Washington, D.C., people 

who depend on discretionary spending are going to continually feel 

the pinch, which is problematic, as Ms. Edwards pointed out. At 

this point there is really only one significant proposal in Washington, D.C., to address the 60 percent of the pie that is on our side 

of the aisle in our budget, and until the American people help us 

address that, we are going to continue to have ongoing discretionary-funding problems because most of the driver of our national 

debt is not in discretionary programs, it is in mandatory spending, 

and everyone in D.C. recognizes that as a major issue. 

The question I have, the first question I have is, I guess any one 

of you can address it, and I think it is important when people like 

me go back to Indiana and talk to people about where we spend 

money and why, and so Dr. Grunsfeld, in short order, what can I 

tell people why what you are doing is important to the American 

people? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Well, there are a couple of different levels but 

I will try and keep it short. The first is that investments in NASA 

and the National Science Foundation in basic research is really the 

investment in our future, and it is not an abstract thing. Vannevar 

Bush and the Endless Frontier, the document that helped spur on 

the creation of the National Science Foundation really queued it up 

as our investigations in basic science are what are critical to our 

economic prosperity, our health care and the future of the country, 

and it is just a wonderful document to read because that is coming 

out of World War II, and the question was asked, how did science 

help us win the war, and then generate such a strong economy. If 

we start cutting back on the basic research, on trying to solve very 

hard problems like how to build the instruments on James Webb 

Space Telescope that challenge our industry, that challenge our engineers, that allow these companies to grow new techniques and 

new competitive tools, we will just continue to start losing ground 

on the kinds of innovations that drive our economy, and that is a 

very tight loop and well-documented loop. 

At the other end of the extreme is this idea of kids looking up 

in the night sky, and I think we have all done that, and the science 

tells us things that just inspire us, that cause us to want to look 

towards the future, to have vision, that drives people through hard 

times and that makes it into the science textbooks that hopefully 

our students then bring with them as they become future decision 

makers in our country, not just in Congress but as medical doctors, 

and most importantly, as parents of children, that they have the 

knowledge to make good decisions based on technical knowledge. 

Thank you. 

Mr. BUCSHON. Okay. I assume everyone is going to have a similar response because I have another question that I want to ask. 

By the way, I agree with you. I think that when I talk to people 

about NASA, and this comes up all the time, I pull out the list of 

things that have been developed technologically and innovations 

that have come through NASA that aren’t just about putting a person flying around the Earth and going to the moon but all the 
43 

other things that happened as a result of developing the technology 

to make that occur. 

My second question is, I am always interested when I see—and 

I hate to focus on NASA—like our project on Mars is that we are 

looking for water, we are looking for carbon-based life forms, and 

there are other—that is our definition of life, so to speak. Are there 

other people out there that have other definitions of life that are 

looking at that we might also be exploring for? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Well, I think that is a good question for Dr. 

Doyle from the SETI. 

Mr. BUCSHON. That would be great. 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. I will say that the Curiosity Rover, although it 

has the scientific instruments, the mass spectrometers to look at 

all the components of the soil we are digging up and looking for 

some signs of perhaps previous carbon stuff going on, it would see 

many other things, but I will pass that to Dr. Doyle. 

Dr. DOYLE. I will just say the definition, some of the people working in the field of exobiology are looking at the definition of life as 

anything that can store information. So there is a broad brush 

there. So there are studies going on about a broader definition. 

Right now you have to work with what you know, but silicon-based 

information storage and crystals and so on has not been out of the 

realm of consideration. 

Mr. BUCSHON. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman PALAZZO. I now recognize Mr. Lipinski for five minutes. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to start out 

by asking Dr. Grunsfeld about the status of the decision on what 

to do with the telescopes donated by NRO. You had mentioned 

them, but has that all been determined what is going to be done 

with those? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. So the answer is no, we haven’t determined 

what is going to be done with those. That is the subject I was talking about of the Astrophysics Large Focused Telescope Asset that 

we have done a study on. At the end of this month, I will get the 

results of that study and then we will brief Administrator Bolden, 

and that would us to go to the next step from just the study phase 

to actually, if he approves it, seeing if we should start doing some 

engineering to validate that those telescopes could actually be used 

for a future space telescope. So, right now our focus is on completing the James Webb Space Telescope. As we get further into 

development of that telescope, then we could start seriously thinking about building another mission of some kind, whether in astrophysics or another area. We are very excited about what we are 

seeing so far, and I am happy, once Charlie Bolden, our Administrator, has dispositioned it, to come back and talk to you about it. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Very good. I want to ask all the panelists, what, 

if anything, is needed to further facilitate the coordination and collaboration between the NSF and NASA on exoplanet exploration 

and research? Is there anything more that would help? Any places 

for improvement that you see? 

Dr. ULVESTAD. Let me start with that. I think that as you heard 

from our testimony, we understand very well how our different assets could work together with each other, and we are in pretty reg-
44 

ular communication about setting up joint programs and so on. In 

fact, I think one of the key elements is actually even working at 

a lower level, which is that our program officers in the two agencies actually talk to each other regularly. We had a meeting of all 

of our program officers in our Astronomical Sciences Division and 

NASA’s Astrophysics Division about a month and a half ago just 

to talk about making sure that we kept our lines of communication 

open, making sure that we understood which proposals we were 

getting and they were getting for research so that we were doing 

complementary things and not doing duplicative research. I think 

that is a very important aspect of our coordination, to maximize 

the efficiency of the funding. I would say that it is not clear to me 

that we need a lot of help as long as we keep talking to each other, 

which we are doing very regularly right now. So I will yield to Dr. 

Grunsfeld and see what he would like to say about that. 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. I would concur on that. I wouldn’t take this too 

far but I think one of the effects of always being budget limited for 

research in space astronomy and ground-based astronomy is that 

you are forced to be very communicative and creative with your 

partners to make sure that you don’t have duplication because 

there isn’t enough money to be able to duplicate things. In the case 

of the National Science Foundation and the NASA efforts on 

exoplanets, it is a very nice division because we use basically the 

space-based and ground-based as the first natural breakpoint. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. 

Dr. DOYLE. I would just say that SETI Institute is a nonprofit 

and there are many research institutions that are rather small, but 

they have started up support of exoplanet research. For example, 

Planet Hunters has millions of people that go home at night and 

start looking for planets. So there is this huge upswell of millions 

of supporters of exoplanet research that is also in kind of the nonprofit realm as well that could be tapped. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. That is always good to hear. I know we have a lot 

of Members here and a short time, so I will yield back the rest of 

my time. Thank you. 

Chairman PALAZZO. I now recognize Chairman Smith for five 

minutes. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Actually, my first question, I think, has largely been answered, 

and it was, how do we expedite the process of searching for 

exoplanets, and it sounds to me like we need to stay on track with 

the exoplanet missions that Dr. Grunsfeld highlighted a while ago. 

Would you all agree, Dr. Doyle and Dr. Grunsfeld, that the first 

thing we need to do is make sure the current missions that have 

been proposed are funded and not all had been funded? Would that 

be your recommendation? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Well, I am glad to say that—— 

Chairman SMITH. Or are there any other missions that we ought 

to consider? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. So I agree with you completely. The plan we 

have is, I think, the best plan that we could have and the Administration’s proposal for Fiscal Year 2014 funds us to go on with the 

next mission, which is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey mission, 

and fully funds James Webb Space Telescope. All of that said, ulti-
45 

mately nature will determine when we find the first planet that 

looks just like Earth. 

Chairman SMITH. And Dr. Doyle, are there any other missions 

we should be considering other than the ones that need to be funded? 

Dr. DOYLE. Well, I think the ones currently are quite well 

planned. They do an all-around survey, and then to follow through 

with detecting exolife basically. So I think we are on track. 

Chairman SMITH. Dr. Grunsfeld, I was going to point out, I think 

when you quoted Alfred Lord Tennyson, you didn’t realize that we 

had the quote that you mentioned on the wall behind the podium, 

or did you notice that? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. I noticed that in 2003 when I was Chief Scientist, and that is when I started putting it into my presentation. 

Chairman SMITH. Good. Then we came first. As you know, it is 

a long poem, and that is the refrain that is repeated throughout 

the poem, so it really has a good impact. 

Dr. Ulvestad, you mentioned our international friends and the 

missions that they have initiated. Do you think we should perhaps 

duplicate some of those missions or should we rely upon information that we get from them? 

Dr. ULVESTAD. Well, I think that what we are doing right now 

with our international colleagues is, we are not doing duplication, 

we are actually going in together to build one telescope that any 

one of us would find it difficult to afford by ourselves. 

Chairman SMITH. So that is mutually beneficial? 

Dr. ULVESTAD. Yes, I think that is mutually beneficial, and an 

example—and we keep coming back to the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, but originally there were concepts for a similar telescope in Japan, in Europe and in the United States, three different 

telescopes that were all going to end up fairly close to each other 

in Chile. Rather than building those three separate telescopes, by 

the three areas of the world coming together, we were able to build 

one much more capable telescope that we all can use. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you. Let me ask you all this final 

question, and that is, what new technology do we need to develop 

in order to expedite the process of detecting organic life on an 

exoplanet, and do we need to do more than we are doing? If so, 

what do we need to do and when do you expect us to have that 

blockbuster news that there is possible life on another planet? Dr. 

Doyle? 

Dr. DOYLE. Well, of course, as mentioned, you need a much larger telescope, but the detection of oxygen would be definitely an indicator of life on another planet. If it transits, you can also—that 

is another method for detecting oxygen on an exoplanet. 

Chairman SMITH. Do we have the technology now to detect oxygen on another planet? 

Dr. DOYLE. If there was a very close star like an M star and a 

very close orbit and we got lots of transits and we could differentially subtract, we might be able to squeeze by and get an oxygen 

line or so. But the next mission, of course, is to get the nearby 

transiting planets, and then we could consider—like Dr. Grunsfeld 

said, nature is the one that will decide whether we can do that in 

the near future. 
46 

Chairman SMITH. Dr. Grunsfeld, anything more we should be 

doing to expedite that time? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. A critical limitation is really the ability to separate the light from a bright star from the light from a very dim 

planet next to it that is in reflected light, and so we are spending 

a fair amount of technology funds and researchers working on techniques to do that light suppression across a broad variety of fronts, 

four or five different techniques. So we are making a lot of 

progress. I think within five years, we will have demonstrated that 

if we put one of those instruments on a new large telescope, we 

would be able to detect essentially signs of life if they are as obvious as they are on Earth. 

Chairman SMITH. We are going to hold you to that within five 

years. 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. We will have the technology. You can hold me 

to that. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Dr. Ulvestad, any more thoughts on 

that? 

Dr. ULVESTAD. I think the key that Dr. Grunsfeld just referred 

to is really being able to separate the light of a dim planet, which 

a planet like Earth is dim when it is many light-years away, from 

the light of the very bright star that is its host. For instance, the 

instrument I mentioned in our Gemini telescope is one of the steps 

along the way, but I also mentioned that it could only detect planets that were out farther than Jupiter, which is not where we expect Earth planets to be. We have still got a ways to go to be able 

to dull the star down to the dimness we require. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you all for your testimony. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman PALAZZO. I now recognize Ms. Bonamici for five minutes. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, for this interesting hearing, and thank you to the witnesses for your expertise. I am going to ask two questions together 

because in the interest of time, hoping that each witness can respond to each. We have also had discussions in this committee 

about near-Earth objects and the potential for asteroid incidents, 

and in those hearings we talked a lot about international collaboration because obviously this is not just an issue that affects our 

country. So will you each discuss briefly the nature of international 

collaboration in the exoplanet research? The second question has to 

do with more of a big-picture issue. As Members of this Committee, 

we are privileged to be frequently presented with this extensive information on these issues and hear from people with expertise, and 

then when we are back in our districts, we often find that the public at large lacks specific information about the work that NASA is 

doing, and importantly, how it affects them. So with that in mind, 

could you also address how you publicize what you are doing, how 

you educate the public about not only the discovery of exoplanets 

but how to best translate that into the benefits to the public at 

large. Thank you. I will ask each of you to respond to those two 

issues. 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. I will go ahead and start. Almost everything we 

do in NASA has large international collaboration—the Inter-
47 

national Space Station, the James Webb Space Telescope. These 

are partnerships where there is integral collaboration between the 

European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, the United 

States, in the case of the space station, Russia and Japan, and 

these are working great. I would say probably 90 percent of everything in the Science Mission Directorate is an international collaboration at some level where we are contributing to leadership of a 

European instrument or another country is contributing to leadership in one of our programs. The James Webb Space Telescope is 

an example the United States is leading. Even on the Hubble 

Space Telescope, originally that was a 15 percent share of the European Space Agency. But when we actually go to use the telescope, it is very broad, and of course, all of our data is public and 

so anyone can actually use it and so that is much further. 

When we discover things, we put them out as press releases, we 

put them on Web sites, but more importantly, we have an educational public outreach program, where the scientists work with 

master teachers and that gets into curriculum materials, into the 

textbooks and into pre-service and in-service teachers who then 

work with millions of students. That is how we work through the 

educational side. Through more informal education, we reach out 

to libraries across the country, planetariums and museums. We do 

exhibits and shows. All of that contributes to the public knowledge 

of the science benefits from NASA. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. Dr. Doyle? 

Dr. DOYLE. On the Kepler team, I would say we have a huge 

number of countries represented. There is the Astrobiology Consortium, which is centered in Denmark, but there are 500 members 

of that, and that is just a spin-off from the main Kepler science 

team. So I would say Kepler is automatically international. 

With regard to reaching out and educational activities, one of the 

things that we are doing is basically starting a series of a kind of 

a wiki university where people can learn about life in the universe 

from the SETI Institute and take classes and so on, and I don’t see 

any reason why they couldn’t pass the SAT after taking our classes. So it is free and online, and let us go for it. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. Dr. Ulvestad? 

Dr. ULVESTAD. Yes, first on the international front, like NASA, 

most of our major activities now are international in terms of 

building big telescopes and operating big telescopes. But I will honestly say that there is also some competition there in the use of 

those telescopes. We would like the scientists from the United 

States to actually be leading in the discoveries. So they may be in 

collaborations, and in fact often are with other international scientists, but we do want to make sure that the U.S. scientists have 

the opportunities to use the tools we have built. 

Now, you mentioned near-Earth objects so I will just pick up on 

that for a second. The number one ranking in the National Academy Decadal Survey for a ground-based instrument was actually 

something called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, and one of 

its science goals is to characterize the asteroid population in our 

own solar system and can do that very extensively including nearEarth asteroids. That happens to be not an international partnership but a partnership with the Department of Energy, so you may 
48 

consider them international relative to NSF and NASA. They have 

slightly different cultures than we have. But that is a different sort 

of incredibly valuable partnership. 

With respect to the public information, one of the requirements 

we have at NSF for everybody who applies for a research grant and 

for our large facility managers is something called broader impacts. 

They are required to tell us what they are doing, will do in their 

grant for broader impacts to the public. So in getting ready for this 

hearing, I was actually looking at the research grants that we have 

been making on exoplanets over the last several years, and a large 

fraction of those people, their broader impacts involved going into 

high schools. It ranged between K–12 but high schools seem to be 

a particular point that they were interested in, and that, if I can 

pick up on a previous question, is very important because—— 

Ms. BONAMICI. I am sorry. My time is expired. I yield back. 

Chairman PALAZZO. Thank you, Dr. Ulvestad. I now recognize 

Mr. Rohrabacher for a couple minutes, not the full five. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me just note that we have been engaged 

in a search for intelligent life for a long time over in the Senate, 

however, and sometimes it is hard to determine. 

I just want to make sure we understand that the last mission 

concept does not necessarily rely on the SLS rocket, does it not? 

There are other two proposed architectures for this system that 

would not require us to build this big booster and instead could be 

launched on EELV-class launch vehicles. Isn’t that correct? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. Yes. The Advanced Large Area Space Telescope 

concept is one of these new-world-type future large telescopes, and 

in that study there were three telescopes studied: an 8-meter diameter—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The answer is yes? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. The answer is yes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The answer is yes, so this is not—do you 

know what the budget for the SLS Launch System is? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. I—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We don’t know, so you don’t know either. 

Quite frankly, that was a leading question. 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. All right. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And if that money was going to be taken out 

of your budget to develop the SLS Launch System rather than go 

with the launch systems that we have already got, would you be 

supportive of that? 

Dr. GRUNSFELD. No. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. I just want to make sure these are on 

the record because there is a lot of people pushing for the SLS 

Launch System and we don’t even know what the budget is, we 

don’t know where the money is coming from, and it is really possible if we do that, we will just defund all the things the SLS is 

supposed to carry, meaning your projects. 

The last thing is Arecibo Telescope. I noticed that the NSF Arecibo Telescope Observatory was actually the ones who found the 

first evidence in this exoplanet. Let me just note, we almost closed 

that down for lack of funds, and some of us understood just how 

important that was. Let us make sure we—because that telescope 

really remains a very important part of the very projects that we 
49 

are talking about. So, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the 

hearing and I just want to make sure we got on the record. Thank 

you. 

Chairman PALAZZO. I want to thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the Members for their questions. The Members 

of the Committee may have additional questions for you, and we 

will ask that you respond to those in writing. The record will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and written 

questions from Members. 

The witnesses are excused and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:00 a.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.] 

(51) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
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ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Laurance Doyle 
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59 
60 
61 
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Responses by Dr. John M. Grunsfeld 
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64 
65 
66 
67 
68 
69 
70 
71 
72 
73 
74 
75 
76 
77 
78 
79 
80 
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Responses by Dr. Dr. James Ulvestad 
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88 
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90 
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(95) 

Appendix II 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD
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NASA EXOPLANET MISSIONS GRAPHIC SUBMITTED BY DR. JOHN M. GRUNSFELD

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