Latest Astrobiology Stories
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA’s Curiosity rover has become the first robot ever to drill into bedrock and collect a sample on Mars, using a drill located at the end of its mechanical arm to bore a hole into fine-grained sediment, then collecting material from the interior for future analysis, the US space agency announced on Friday. According to NASA officials, Curiosity drilled a hole that is approximately 0.63 inch wide and 2.5 inches deep in a rock...
PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep...
[ Watch the Podcast: The Search For Alien Life With Guest Dr. Eric Mamajek (Part 3): Your Universe Today Podcast ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A group of astronomers have determined through NASA Kepler mission data that less than one in a million stars in the Milky Way galaxy could have intelligent life. The University of California, Berkeley team used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to look for intelligent radio signals from planets around 86 of...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA announced on Thursday its Curiosity rover has performed a mini drilling test on Mars for the first time. The drill, according to NASA, went through percussion and rotation tests to bore into about 0.8-inches of rock on Mars, generating cuttings for evaluation in advance of the rover's first sample-collection drilling. NASA said this test was confirmed in data received from Mars late Wednesday at the Jet Propulsion...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers using NASA's Kepler space telescope have found that six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-like planets. Red dwarfs are considered to be the most abundant stars in our galaxy, so it is feasible that one of these Earth-like planets could be just 13 light-years away, when taking into account the astronomers new research published in The Astrophysical Journal. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics...
NASA The bit of the rock-sampling drill on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity left its mark on a Martian rock this weekend during brief testing of the tool's percussive action. The successful activity, called a "drill-on-rock checkout" by the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, is part of a series of tests to prepare for the first drilling in history to collect a sample of rock material on Mars. Another preparatory test, called "mini drill," will precede the full...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online [ Be sure to check out our recent podcasts on Planet Hunting, and The Search For Life Beyond Earth ] The holy grail of planetary astronomy is the elusive Earth-like planet that scientists hope will show that life exists elsewhere in our galaxy. With a growing database of more than 2,000 planet candidates, researchers feel it is only a matter of time before a planet is found with the potential to sustain life. This gives...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing to use its drill to bore into a Martian rock in the coming days. The rover carried out “pre-load” testing on January 27, placing the drill tip on a series of four locations on the rock and pressing down to test whether the amount of force applied to the hardware matches predictions formulated by NASA engineers. The team next planned to have Curiosity conduct an overnight pre-load test,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online More evidence is coming in Mars used to be thriving with ancient riverbeds, according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Brown University researchers found networks of narrow ridges in impact craters on Mars that appear to be fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed. The study adds more weight to the growing pile of evidence Mars once had an active hydrology and...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Opportunity rover is closing in on its 10-year anniversary, and is still performing science missions on the Red Planet, reports the Associated Press. The veteran rover first entered Mars' southern hemisphere on January 24, 2004, a few weeks after its twin rover, Spirit, landed on the opposite side of the planet. Before the media began to have an appetite for Curiosity, Opportunity was the darling rover, touching down on 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...
