Latest Astrobiology Stories
NASA Mission status report After imaging during the holidays, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity resumed driving Jan. 3 and pulled within arm's reach of a sinuous rock feature called "Snake River." Snake River is a thin curving line of darker rock cutting through flatter rocks and jutting above sand. Curiosity's science team plans to get a closer look at it before proceeding to other nearby rocks. "It's one piece of the puzzle," said the mission's project scientist, John Grotzinger of...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Mars has been a planet of interest for as long as humans have been going into space. And space scientists for nearly as long have dreamed of one day being able to walk on the surface of the Martian world. And still, others have dreamed of being able to colonize the planet. However, in its current state, it would be a very inhospitable environment for humans. But what if the Red Planet was a hospitable world? What if there were...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA-funded researchers analyzing a small meteorite that may be the first discovered from the Martian surface or crust have found it contains 10 times more water than other Martian meteorites from unknown origins. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) This new class of meteorite was found in 2011 in the Sahara Desert. Designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, and nicknamed "Black Beauty," it weighs...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers have identified a new class of Martian meteorite that they believe originated from Mars' crust. The team wrote in Thursday's issue of Science Express that this new meteorite contains more water than any other Martian meteorite ever found. The sample is the only one found that dates back to 2.1 billion years ago, which is an early era on Mars known as the Amazonian. The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034,...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Stanford University researchers, working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and MIT, have designed a new robotic platform that could be used to explore the moons of Mars. The platform consists of a mother spacecraft and anywhere from one to several spiky, spherical rovers that can be deployed on the surface of a moon, such as Phobos, where they can hop, roll and tumble their way across rugged terrain. Each rover, dubbed...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online According to a report by the Hindustan Times, India is within reach of developing a mission to Mars. The news agency quoted Amitabha Ghosh, an Indian scientist who was a part of the NASA team that picked out the landing site for the space agency's Curiosity mission, for the report. Ghosh told the Hindustan Times that he is optimistic that an Indian mission to Mars will be successful. He pointed out that Indian Space Research...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In a sun-scorched region of Western Australia known as Pilbara, a team of American and Australian paleobiologists believe they have located the oldest known evidence of life on Earth. The ancient bacterial fossils have been dated as 3.49 billion years old, only about a billion years after scientists estimate the Earth was formed. “It’s not just finding this stuff that’s interesting,” said Alan Decho, a geobiologist at the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online While 2012, like most years, held some significant findings, 2013 could be one for the record books when it comes to looking for habitable planets. Astronomers know that they are on the verge of discovering the first truly Earth-like extrasolar planet (exoplanet) in 2013. There have been a few exoplanets in the last few years that are similar in size, inferred surface temperature, and distance to their parent star, but scientists...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online The Mars rover Curiosity will ring in the new year drilling into its first rock before moving on to the base of Mount Sharp, where its search for carbon-based molecules begins in earnest, NASA officials told the media on Saturday. First up in 2013, the rover, which spent the holiday measuring the planet's atmosphere, will begin the process of selecting a rock, drilling into it, and then determining what chemicals it is...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA has been using social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to reach and excite the public all year, and now they have added a new social media partner: Foursquare. Foursquare, a mobile application, and NASA have teamed up to help the public unlock their scientitific curiosity with a new rover-themed Curiosity Explorer badge. Foursquare is a social media platform that is location based – users check in at different...
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...
