Latest Astrobiology Stories
[ Watch the Video: Curiosity Rover's Arm Movements for Taking a Self-Portrait ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA has released an image that the talented Mars Curiosity rover has taken, featuring itself with a Martian background. The self-portrait was taken with Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which captured dozens of high-resolution images to create the picture. The image shows the rover at "Rocknest," which is the spot in Gale Crater where...
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Using computer simulations, scientists from the NASA Astrobiology Institute team at the University of Hawaii are shedding light on a question that has challenged astronomers for years: What causes wide binary stars? (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) Binary stars are pairs of stars that orbit each other. Wide binary stars are separated by as much as one light-year in their orbits, farther apart than some...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Building on the huge success of the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity mission and its past Spirit and Opportunity missions, NASA is making new plans to send a new rover to the Red Planet in 2020. And if all goes as planned, NASA said it also wants to put astronauts in orbit around Mars by the 2030s, highlighting a call for human space exploration outlined by President Barack Obama. NASA said the cost of a rover mission fits...
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Building on the success of Curiosity's Red Planet landing, NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. This announcement affirms the agency's commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation's scientific and human exploration objectives. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "The Obama administration is committed to...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study has found that many planets in other solar systems may be more habitable than our very own. Astronomers and geologists at Ohio State University teamed up to search for alien life in a whole new way; by studying eight "solar twins" of our sun in order to measure the amounts of radioactive elements they contain. Those stars came from a dataset recorded by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS)...
PASADENA, Calif., Dec. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil. Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in samples Curiosity's arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Detection of the substances...
[ Video 1 ] | Video 2 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA has finally opened up its tightly sealed lips and said that its Curiosity rover has found evidence of simple organic compounds on Mars. NASA announced at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco today that its Mars Curiosity rover has completed its first analysis of Martian soil, finding a complex chemistry within the Martian soil. The space agency said its Curiosity rover has found...
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In one of the most remote lakes of Antarctica, nearly 65 feet beneath the icy surface, scientists from NASA, the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nev., the University of Illinois at Chicago, and nine other institutions, have uncovered a community of bacteria. This discovery of life existing in one of Earth's darkest, saltiest and coldest habitats is significant because it helps increase our limited knowledge of how life can...
[WATCH VIDEO: Curiosity Headed To Mars] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Monday (Nov 26) marked the one year anniversary since Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft was launched carrying NASA’s next-generation Mars Curiosity rover. After more than 7 months on a journey to the Red Planet, Curiosity touched down on August 6, 2012 in what has been referred to as “seven minutes of terror.” In the 16 weeks since its landing in the Gale Crater on Mars,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's Mars Express has relayed scientific data from NASA's Curiosity rover for the first time. The data from Curiosity included detailed images of "Rocknest 3" taken by the rover's ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager camera. ChemCam consists of the camera along with a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer, which fires a laser at targets and analyzes the chemical composition of vaporized material. Curiosity...
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 \")
