Welcome to the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

The NExScI is a science operations and analysis service organization for selected NASA Origins Theme projects and the scientists and engineers that use them. The NExScI facilitates the timely and successful execution of Origins theme science by providing software infrastructure, science operations, and consulting to Exoplanet Exploration Program projects and their user communities.

The NExScI is sponsored by NASA's Origins Theme and Exoplanet Exploration Program, and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in coordination with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

NExScI Goals and Mission

The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) is a science analysis service organization for the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program projects and the scientists and engineers who use them. For additional information on NASA's search for extrasolar planets, please visit PlanetQuest.

Specifically, NExScI supports the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI)*, Keck Interferometer (KI), Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), the Terrestrial Planet Finder Missions (TPF), the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) and additional projects in the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

NExScI provides operational software infrastructure and support; archiving of and access to observational data; and consultation for all stages of an experimental project, from concept development and proposal writing to implementation and analysis.

By providing technical and scientific expertise in optical interferometry, NExScI seeks to make NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program interferometry missions accessible to the broadest scientific community.

NExScI is operated by the California Institute of Technology for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

* PTI is operated by the NExScI as an interferometry research facility for the JPL and Caltech communities; it is not a facility observatory open to the astronomical community.