Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. As technologies for studying these worlds continue to advance, researchers may someday be able to search for signs of life on exoplanets that are similar in size, composition, and temperature to Earth. But to do that they'll need new tools, like those being tested on the Coronagraph Instrument on NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The science instrument will block the light from each distant star it observes so that scientists can better see the planets around the star, and it will demonstrate technologies needed to eventually study potentially habitable planets with future missions.
