Latest Astrobiology Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have captured images of hardware from a Soviet era spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971. Russian citizen enthusiasts were following news about NASA's Curiosity rover and Mars when they found four features in a five-year old image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The features resemble four pieces of hardware from the Soviet Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Curiosity rover has been busy searching for signs that life may have once existed on the Red Planet. In the eight months since NASA dropped the rover on Mars, it has made significant progress in the hunt for water and life. In the latest round of evidence pertaining to Mars’ past, new measurements from Curiosity point towards the sky. These measurements, which consisted of analysis of Argon atoms in the planet’s air,...
Author Michael Hunter attempts to uncover his own findings on the investigation about the possibility of life on the red planet. FREMONT, Calif. (PRWEB) April 08, 2013 NASA’s exploration on the planet Mars has been one of the most closely-watched scientific missions in the history of humankind. It spurs questions related to the possibility of life on the planet and continues to inspire research and comprehensive studies among various experts. In his book, Life on Mars: A Study of...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers at The University of Auckland wrote in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that they have a new method that could lead to the discovery of 100 billion earth-like planets. The new strategy, called gravitational microlensing, requires a combination of data from microlensing and the NASA Kepler space telescope. “Kepler finds Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars, and it estimates that...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists reported in the journal Nature Communications that complex organic chemistry could eventually lead to the building blocks of life on Saturn's moon Titan. Experiments at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have shown the same kind of biological chemistry on Earth's surface could also drive chemistry on Titan, even though the Saturn moon receives far less light from the sun and is much colder. "Titan is not a sleeping giant...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A unique find beneath frozen Alaskan sand dunes suggests that liquid water may still exist on the Red Planet. Scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) performed field studies of the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes and found the presence of liquid water during Arctic winter there, suggesting that liquid water could be temporarily stable at frost-covered sand dunes on Mars. They conducted fieldwork in Kobuk Valley National Park,...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has resumed science investigations after recovery from a computer glitch that prompted the engineers to switch the rover to a redundant main computer on Feb. 28. The rover has been monitoring the weather since March 21 and delivered a new portion of powdered-rock sample for laboratory analysis on March 23, among other activities. "We are back to full science operations," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Jim Erickson of...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Curiosity has been having a bit of trouble on Mars lately with its software, and yesterday NASA announced its prized rover entered "safe mode" again after more glitches had occurred. The space agency said its engineers worked to diagnose the software issue that prompted the rover to put itself into the precautionary standby status over the weekend. Curiosity is now back to active status and is on track to resume its science...
Los Alamos National Laboratory Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team will present more than two dozen posters and talks next week during the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. “ChemCam has performed flawlessly in its first six months, providing more than a gigabyte of exciting new information about the Red Planet,” said Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the ChemCam...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory The down-to-Earth persona of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, expressed on Twitter, Facebook, live streaming on Ustream, viral videos and the first Foursquare check-in from another planet, has captured the 2013 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Award for best social media campaign. The award, presented last night at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, honors the Mars Curiosity social media campaign for turning NASA's newest Mars rover into an...
Latest Astrobiology Reference Libraries
Image Caption: Artistic concept of a planetary system. Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/JPL-Caltech The term Astronomy encompasses a broad range of topics, including the study of stars, galaxies, and planets. In order to focus on the different areas of study, many subfields of astronomy emerge. One such area is the study of planets known, appropriately, as Planetary Astronomy. Observational Planetary Astronomy Even within the field of Planetary Astronomy, there are several divisions to...
Astrobiology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published monthly by Mary Ann Liebert Inc. It is the official journal of the Astrobiology Society. As of May 2012, the editor-in-chief is Sherry L. Cady, PhD (Portland State University, Department of Geology). Astrobiology is the leading international journal for astronomers, biologists, chemists, geologists, microbiologists, paleontologists, and planetary scientists designed to advance our understanding of life’s origin, evolution, and...
Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer who pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and science in general. He is less well known for his skepticism. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Sagan attended the University of Chicago, where he received a bachelor's degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956) in physics, before earning his doctorate (1960) in astronomy and astrophysics. He taught at Harvard University...
Xenobiology -- Xenobiology (or exobiology, or astrobiology) is the term for a speculative field within biology which considers the possibility of, and possible nature of, extraterrestrial life. It also necessarily includes the concept of artificial life, since any life form might naturally evolve elsewhere, could conceivably come out of a laboratory using a future technology. It might be difficult to tell whether a truly strange life form had in fact arisen in space, or was designed much...
Panspermia -- Panspermia is a theory (more directly described as a hypothesis, as there is no compelling evidence yet available to support or contradict it) that suggests that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the universe and life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating. The theory has origins in the ideas of Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher. An important proponent of the theory was the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. There is some evidence to...
![Curiosity GCMS SAM \](/media/gallery/mars-science-laboratory/thumbs/thumbs_pia16836-br.jpg "Curiosity GCMS SAM \")
![Curiosity NavCam MAHLI \](/media/gallery/mars-science-laboratory/thumbs/thumbs_pia16925_right-br.jpg "Curiosity NavCam MAHLI \")
![Curiosity NavCam MAHLI Mount Sharp \](/media/gallery/mars-science-laboratory/thumbs/thumbs_pia16925_right1-br.jpg "Curiosity NavCam MAHLI Mount Sharp \")
