UCL researchers are investigating how a UK-led team could design and build one of the core instruments on a flagship NASA mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will search for signs of life on distant planets. The mission is expected to launch in the early 2040s and is currently in an early preparatory phase. It will be “the first specifically engineered to identify habitable, Earth-like planets… and examine them for evidence of life”, according to NASA. A consortium led by UCL