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Alta-X Drone Tests Future Astrobiology / Astrogeology Droid Technology
[NASA]. An Alta-X drone flies an advanced guidance and navigation system known as the Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) experiment. The flight test was conducted near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. Researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston developed SPLICE, which successfully…
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Landforms In Ares Vallis Carved Out By Ancient Water Flow
[NASA]. Ares Vallis is a large valley that was carved billions of years ago by…
Evolution of Stellar Activity and Habitable Zone (EATEN): III. X-ray Activity of Dwarfs in Open Clusters and Field Stars
[astro-ph.SR] Stellar X-ray emission serves as a direct diagnostic of coronal activity, which is fundamentally…
Radial Velocity Detection Of The TRAPPIST-1 Planetary System With SPIRou And NIRPS
[astro-ph.EP]. The TRAPPIST-1 system is well-known for its seven transiting Earth-sized exoplanets. It has been…
Earth As A Potential Source Of Llife For Europa’s Subsurface Ocean
The paper discusses the possibility of dust particles containing living bacteria ejected from Earth reaching Europa and landing on its surface. It is shown that, taking certain factors into account, over a period of 30 − 80 Myr (the estimated age of Europa’s ocean), Jupiter’s moon would have been impacted…
Keep readingDust To Dust: Prospects For Passive Technosignatures As Relics Of ETI
Technological societies are separated in time, not just space — that is the lesson of the Drake equation. Might the best way to seek them be to find technosignatures that persist long after their creators? I present work I and my collaborators have done on the idea of passive technosignatures,…
Keep readingExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Astrogeology
Astronomy & Telescopes
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
Auroral Belts As Magnetically Localized Reactors For Prebiotic Chemistry On Early Earth
[Biosystems] Most models of prebiotic chemistry emphasize globally distributed or widely acting energy sources, including ultraviolet radiation, lightning, impacts, and energetic particles. However, spatially localized environments capable of repeatedly concentrating reactive chemistry may also have contributed to sustaining nonequilibrium chemical evolution on the early Earth. Here, we propose that Earth’s auroral belts may have acted…
Read moreExploration Gear & Tech
Rethinking The Origin Of Life At Seafloor Hydrothermal Vents
[PNAS] Alkaline vents have dominated a class of hypotheses for the origins of life since their discovery a quarter of century ago, but advances in…
Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy of Planetary Materials Using Laser Deposited Plasmonic Gold Nanoparticles
[x-mol.net] This work demonstrates a surface-enhanced raman spectroscopy (SERS) approach based on laser deposition of Au plasmonic nanoparticles onto several relevant mineral surfaces. A pulsed…
NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) Cooperative Agreement Notice (NNH26ZDA016C) Final Text And Due Dates
[NASA] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate (HSMD) have released the final text of the…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
Mars Rover Curiosity’s Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) Calibration
[NASA]. NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s…
NASA Administrator Visits Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS)
[NASA]. Dragonfly will explore sites of interest around Titan’s equatorial regions and collect samples of surface material for analysis inside DraMS, the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer.…
The Metallicity Of Giant Exoplanets Around Low-mass Stars And How Ariel Can Help
[astro-ph.EP] Giant planets orbiting low-mass stars represent a unique population of giant planets that can be studied to constrain planet formation theory. Surveys of transiting…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Structure Of An RNA polymerase Ribozyme Replication Complex
[biorxiv.org] Life began with the emergence of a molecule that could replicate its own genetic material, a task plausibly mediated by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase…
Carbon and Sulfur Isotopes of Microfossils and Pyrites from Neoarchean Cherts: Microbial Diversity in an Ancient Deep-Marine Environment
[Astrobiology (Journal) via PubMed] The 2.52 Ga Gamohaan Formation in South Africa offers critical insights into microbial ecosystems that inhabited deep-marine environments during the late…
Identifying Casual SETI Transmissions And Ultra-Faint RFI With Cumulant Imaging
[astro-ph.IM] Techniques for identifying radio beacons transmitted by extra-terrestrial civilizations are well advanced. However, the casual broadband emission from standard radio communication is much harder…