NASA-backed interferometer aims to image surfaces of distant exoplanets

A NASA‑funded concept study, led by physicist Paul Stankus, proposes a "dynamic hierarchical nulling" interferometer that would suppress starlight by a factor of ten billion to one, allowing the faint light of an Earth‑size exoplanet such as Kepler‑1649c to be detected. The design calls for two spacecraft separated by about 100 km whose combined beams would act as a single, vastly larger virtual telescope capable of resolving planetary continents and oceans.

Separately, researchers at Hanyang University have demonstrated a quantum‑imaging approach that measures the spatial mode of photons to distinguish a planet’s light from its star’s glare. Simulations showed the algorithm could correctly identify objects up to 100 million times dimmer than their host stars in more than 70 % of cases, suggesting resilience to real‑world noise. Both efforts remain in the research stage, but they illustrate emerging techniques that could one day enable direct surface mapping of distant worlds.