Meanwhile, on the drawing board…

Proposed 900-telescope array could detect an Earth-like exoplanet's atmosphere in a single transit phys.org

When an Earth-sized planet crosses its star, the atmosphere leaves its fingerprint in a sliver of starlight — oxygen, ozone, water vapour — but the chance comes around only once a planetary year. A proposed array of 900 modest telescopes working as one would gather enough light to read that spectrum in a single transit, instead of waiting decades for repeats.