Assam-born scientist Dr. Angaraj Duara working on NASA mission to search for signs of life beyond earth
Assam-born scientist Dr Angaraj Duara is working on NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory mission. His team is testing sensors that could help detect signs of life on distant planets.
- Oct 11, 2026,
- Updated Oct 11, 2026, 1:51 PM IST
An Assam-born space scientist, Dr. Angaraj Duara, is contributing to NASA’s upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a next-generation space telescope designed to search for signs of life beyond our solar system. The mission is currently planned for launch around 2040 and aims to explore one of humanity’s oldest questions: Are we alone in the universe?
Dr. Duara joined the HWO mission in 2025 and is part of the UK team based at the Centre for Electronic Imaging (CEI). Working in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), his team is testing advanced CMOS image sensors that could potentially be used in the telescope.
These detectors will play a crucial role in capturing extremely faint signals from distant planets beyond our solar system. The data could help scientists analyse the atmospheres of these planets and investigate whether they show signs of conditions associated with life.
Before joining the HWO mission, Dr. Duara worked on another space mission, the CASTOR Space Telescope. His career in space science has focused on advanced detector technologies and their applications in astrophysics.
Originally from Assam, Dr. Duara has been living and working in the United Kingdom for the past 15 years. He completed his undergraduate degree in Astrophysics at the University of Leicester before pursuing a PhD at the Leicester Space Research Centre, where he specialised in detectors for high-energy astrophysics.
Describing his involvement in the HWO mission, Dr. Duara said it has been the most exciting phase of his scientific career because of the mission’s potential to address the fundamental question of whether life exists beyond Earth.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory is being developed as a flagship-class space telescope with the long-term goal of directly observing Earth-like planets around other stars and studying them for potential signs of life. If successful, the mission could significantly advance humanity’s understanding of planets beyond our solar system and the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.
Dr. Duara’s work places him among the scientists contributing to the development of technologies that could help make this ambitious search possible, while also highlighting the contribution of an Assam-born researcher to international space science.