“The TRAPPIST-1 system offers one of the best opportunities to characterize temperate terrestrial planets beyond our own solar system. Within the TRAPPIST-1 system, planet e stands out as highly likely to sustain surface liquid water if it possesses an atmosphere. Recently, we reported the first JWST/NIRSpec PRISM transmission spectra of TRAPPIST-1 e, revealing significant stellar contamination, which varied between the four visits. Here, we assess the range of planetary atmospheres consistent with our transmission spectrum. We explore a wide range of atmospheric scenarios via a hierarchy of forward modeling and retrievals. We do not obtain strong evidence for or against an atmosphere. Our results weakly disfavor CO2-rich atmospheres for pressures corresponding to the surface of Venus and Mars and the cloud tops of Venus at 2σ.”

“We exclude H2-rich atmospheres containing CO2 and CH4 in agreement with past work but find that higher mean molecular weight, N2-rich atmospheres with trace CO2 and CH4 are permitted by the data. Both a bare rock and N2-rich atmospheric scenario provide adequate fits to the data but do not fully explain all features, which may be due to either uncorrected stellar contamination or atmospheric signals. Ongoing JWST observations of TRAPPIST-1 e, exploiting consecutive transits with TRAPPIST-1 b, will offer stronger constraints via a more effective stellar contamination correction. The present work is part of the JWST Telescope Scientist Team Guaranteed Time Observations, which is performing a Deep Reconnaissance of Exoplanet Atmospheres through Multi-instrument Spectroscopy,” says the abstract to a new paper by a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore working off of data from the James Webb space telescope.

And yes, TRAPPIST was named by Belgian scientists for that type of beer brewed by local monks.