New Space Mission Could Search for Star Trek Planet - Vulcan

Star Trek fans around the world will be thrilled to know that an upcoming space mission will look for the famous Vulcan homeworld. In the show, Vulcan is a reddish Minshara-Class planet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A, 16 light years from Earth and is the homeworld of the Vulcans. Apparently, this classification also gave the name of a class of inhabitable planets, the M-class.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is preparing a planet-finding mission, SIM PlanetQuest that would be able to detect an Earth-like planet around the star 40 Eridani.

The 40 Eridani is a triple-star system 16 light-years from Earth and it consists of a red-orange K dwarf star slightly smaller and cooler than our Sun.

Astronomer Dr. Angelle Tanner at Caltech and planetary theorist, Dr. Sean Raymond of the University of Colorado, Boulder, wondered if the mission could ever find a planet similar to that described in the sci-fi series.

"Since the three members of the triple star system are so far away from each other [hundreds of astronomical units - the Earth-Sun distance], I see no reason why an Earth-mass planet would not be able to form around the primary star, 40 Eridani A," he said.

The possibility of life existing on such a planet is conditioned by the orbit of the planet, which would have to be in a sweet spot around the star where liquid water could be present on its surface, as it's the main requirement for any known life forms.

"A K dwarf star emits its light at wavelengths which are a bit redder compared to those from the sun, so I wonder whether it's harder to get a tan there," said Tanner.

This habitable zone is located at around 0.6 astronomical units from the Sun, which means that a year on Vulcan would last for only six months. However, this could not account for the very long lifespan of the Vulcans, which, in the show, are presented as being able to live for hundreds of years.

The SIM PlanetQuest has incredibly precise instruments on board, which could even calculate the thickness of a small coin, say a nickel, located on the surface of the Moon.