The discovery of possibly habitable planet Gliese 581C last week by European astronomers (working from a telescope in Chile) caused a stir in the stargazing world. Some people are already wondering how they can get there. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: Nobody has actually seen the planet that's been calculated to be orbiting Gliese 581, a dim red star that's part of the Libra constellation. We just know its size (five times larger than earth), and its possible temperature range (0 to 40° Celsius).

Times like these call for special space-based telescopes called Terrestrial Planet Finders (TPFs), which are made to detect Earth-like aspects of planets in other solar systems. Wired has posted a gallery of renderings of NASA's proposed TPF and the European Space Agency's proposed Darwin mission, which would serve a similar purpose. Both projects have run into "political, technical and financial difficulties," according to The New York Times. Perhaps the Gliese 581C discovery will inspire the people in charge to solve them.

Check out another rendering of the TPFs after the jump. — S.E. Kramer

Via Wired

CORRECTION: The original version of this story implied that the telescopes were intended to seek out Earth-like planets in our own solar system, but their actual purpose is to find them elsewhere in the galaxy.