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The researchers, using a relatively small Earth-based telescope, successfully measured details of an exoplanet's atmospheric composition and conditions -- a feat NASA calls "an unprecedented achievement from an Earth-based observatory."

The accomplishment, the space agency said, promises to accelerate by years the search for prebiotic, or life-related, molecules on planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system.

The scientists used NASA's 30-year-old, 10-foot-diameter (3-meter) telescope at the space agency's Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

"The fact that we have used a relatively small, ground-based telescope is exciting because it implies that the largest telescopes on the ground, using this technique, may be able to characterize terrestrial exoplanet targets", said Mark Swain, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study's lead author.

The research that included scientists from the University of Arizona, University College London; UCLA, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy and the SOFIA Institute is reported in the journal Nature.

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