The planetary habitability project

The Solar System has long been thought to represent the only habitable planetary system. This has been challenged by the discovery that planets orbiting Sun-like stars are common in our Galaxy, raising the possibility that Earth-like planets, and perhaps life, exists elsewhere. These findings have fostered the concept of planetary habitability, which defines the conditions at the surface of a planet required for life to develop. PLANETS aims to understand how the formation process of rocky planets modulates their volatile inventory, atmospheric composition, and pathways towards the chemical complexity critical to life. Our overarching goal is to develop a unified theory to explain the composition of the Solar System’s rocky planets, allowing us to assess the potential habitability of planets beyond our Solar System.