As of last month, we’re pretty certain there’s an Earth-mass planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth. This raises a rather obvious question: can it support life? The planet, Proxima Centauri b, orbits within its star’s habitable zone, the distance at which water might exist in liquid form.

Whether there is any liquid present depends in part on whether the planet supports an atmosphere, and that is a hard question to answer. If Proxima Centauri b had formed near its present orbit, it might have seen its early atmosphere blown away during one of its host star’s more active phases. But researchers know frustratingly little about the evolution of red dwarf stars like Proxima Centauri. Furthermore, the planet might have formed further out and migrated inwards later, in which case the star’s activity wouldn’t matter.

Since we can’t reason out whether there’s an atmosphere, the alternative is to look for one. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Despite being the closest star, it’s still about 4.25 light-years away, far enough to be an observational challenge. According to a manuscript posted to the arXiv however, we’re set to launch the tool we’d need in 2018: the James Webb Space Telescope.