Upcoming Solar System exploration missions will search for extraterrestrial (ET) life, but ET life may not be like Earth life; a new mass spectrometry analysis…
NASA’s newest Mars rover is beginning to study the floor of an ancient crater that once held a lake. NASA’s Perseverance rover has been busy…
The Sun isn’t the only star to produce stellar flares. On April 21, 2021, a team of astronomers published new research describing the brightest flare…
New observations reveal that Mars could still be volcanically active, raising the possibility for habitable conditions below the surface of Mars in recent history. Evidence…
An international collaboration of astronomers led by a researcher from the Astrobiology Center and Queen’s University Belfast, and including researchers from Trinity, has detected a…
The name honors recently deceased mission scientist Rafael Navarro-González, who helped lead the team that identified ancient organic compounds on Mars. The team of scientists…
New research suggests that rocks in the Martian crust could produce the same kind of chemical energy that supports microbial life deep beneath Earth’s surface….
Telescope launching this autumn could spot biosignatures on other planets within three days. Research shows that a new telescope could detect a potential signature of…
Oxygen in the atmosphere may not be an entirely reliable ‘biosignature,’ but there are ways to distinguish false positives from signs of life, scientists say….
A technique for scanning Mars rocks for microscopic fossils of ancient life is also being developed to hunt for microbes in the deep ice of…
To confirm life on other planets, we need to detect far more molecules in their atmospheres than we currently do to rule out non-biological chemical…
We are made of stardust, the saying goes, and a pair of studies including University of Michigan research finds that may be more true than…
Using both transit and radial velocity data, researchers discovered Gliese 486 b — a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 486. At…
In the quest for habitable planets beyond our own, NASA is studying a mission concept called Pandora, which could eventually help decode the atmospheric mysteries…
Challenging assumptions about the possibility of modern life on Mars. In a comment recently published in Nature Astronomy, Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the Carl…
Lightning strikes were just as important as meteorites in creating the perfect conditions for life to emerge on Earth, geologists say. Minerals delivered to Earth…
Layers of ice and rock obviate the need for “habitable zone” and shield life against threats. SwRI researcher theorizes worlds with underground oceans may be…
Experimental microbially assisted chemolithotrophy provides an opportunity to trace the putative bioalteration processes of the Martian crust. A study on the Noachian Martian breccia Northwest…