The Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized astronomy. A single, large mirror placed outside their own atmosphere was able to collect enough light from distant regions of the universe to produce remarkable images of galaxies that we had never seen before and expanded our knowledge of our universe immensely. The shooting star, Hubble was a remarkable achievement in engineering as well as optics. With it, we found many planets outside our solar system. However, the pictures told us nothing about the atmosphere of this planet and whether someone would be inhabitable. How could it be done?

By using all different types of telescopes. Photometry collects the same light as it analyzes the light color and intensity rather than simply producing a still image. These colors can then be advised signature products so we know what factors they produced. It has been used for decades to identify gas galaxies, nebulas and individual stars like our own sun. With spectral graphs, chemical signatures of each of these items were obtained. They have even been used to study local gaseous our planet. The question is can we do the same for planets outside our solar system that Hubble and others had already been found?

Dr. William Borucki of NASA proposed the idea to put such a telescope in orbit in a similar way to the Hubble telescope in the late 1980s, but with a twist. It would study one star-planet system with time to take transit of the planet passed its own star and have the opportunity to study the signature of any gas around this planet. NASA his officers laughed at the idea completely absurd and refused to consider funding it. The technology to learn a lot of planets, the imaging and could be considered, but the technology to explore the planets as small as Earth from such distances was not available and they did not think it could be done. It was a response Dr. Borucki expected but refused to accept.