Carl Sagan Institute

So to recap, the plan is then to observe the planet as it passes in front of the star, a so-called transit, take a spectrum of the atmosphere using JWST, and then see if we can detect any of the biosignatures that we've covered thus far.

A detailed study led by Zifan Liu and colleagues from the Carl Sagan Institute, who, by the way, have a great YouTube channel you can check out, tackled this question head on.

Simulating various atmospheric types and instrument modes, they report a somewhat pessimistic forecast for cracking open the champagne anytime soon.

If TRAPPIST-1e resembles modern Earth, then they find that ozone could be detected to 2.4 sigma significance after collecting 200 transits of the planet in the optimal instrument configuration.