Top Story
NASA Spaceline Current Awareness List #1,206 2 July 2026 (Space Life Science Research Results)
The abstract in PubMed or at the publisher’s site is linked when available and will open in a new window. Papers deriving from NASA support: Other papers of interest: astrobiology, Microgravity, NASA, space biology, space medicine, spaceline,
Latest
Older Than The Sun: Astronomers Find New Clues To The Origin Of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS
[ESO] Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to study…
Carl Sagan Month: Call For Participation
[EAI] This year marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the renowned astronomer, science…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory Technology Development Plan
[astro-ph.IM] The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is NASA’s next large space telescope, selected by the…
Searching For The Elusive CH2+ With The James Webb Space Telescope. Another Carbocation To Constrain Astrochemical Networks
[astro-ph.GA] Carbocations are key species in interstellar chemistry, providing entry points for building larger hydrocarbons.…
Exploring The Milky Way Stellar Disk. Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Sulphur, Potassium, and Copper Abundances For 714 F and G dwarf Stars In The Solar Neighbourhood
[astro-ph.GA] We aim to determine abundances of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, potassium, and copper for 714…
Dual Use Technology – An Astrochemistry Spin Off
Editor’s note: many of the tools that are used in astronomy to conduct analyses of…
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 reading
Astronomy & Telescopes
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
Orbital Biosignature Assay: Watching Forests Grow From Space
[Chinese Academy of Sciences] Forests are central to climate mitigation, yet tracking how fast they grow over decades remains difficult. A new satellite-based approach reconstructs forest canopy height changes across southern China from the 1980s onward. The analysis reveals sustained forest growth, clear differences between plantation and secondary forests, and the dominant role of management…
Read moreExploration Gear & Tech
Ocean Planet Expeditions: Alvin Submersible Certified To Return To Service
Editor’s note: Submersibles and oceanic exploration have a long history of intersection and collaboration. NASA Astronaut Loral O’Hara was a research engineer at Woods Hole…
Ocean Planet Exploration: New University of Rhode Island Ocean Robotics Laboratory
[URI] The University of Rhode Island celebrated a major milestone in the $300 million, multi-phase revitalization of the Narragansett Bay Campus with a ribbon cutting…
Perseverance Astrobiology Droid Has Completed A Martian Marathon
[NASA] On June 14, 2026, Mars Perseverance rover completed a Martian “marathon” by surpassing 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) of travel. The day before, NASA’s Mars…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
Photodynamics Of Amino Acids Under UV Excitation: Extraterrestrial Amino Acids
[J. Chem. Phys.] The detection of amino acids in extraterrestrial environments has important implications for astrobiology and prebiotic chemistry, yet the pathways to their syntheses…
How A Giant Planet Survived Its Star’s Death
[Northwestern University] When astronomers discovered a giant planet orbiting a dead star in 2020, they wondered how it survived its star’s violent demise. Now, observations…
Perseverance Astrobiology Rover – A Selfie While Working
[NASA] NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on March 11, 2026, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Chemical Abundances of the Bioessential Elements C, O and S, and the Refractory Elements
[astro-ph.EP] We determined atmospheric and evolutionary parameters, along with chemical abundances of C, O, S, Fe, and Ni for 290 solar-type exoplanet hosting stars using…
Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1-E Photographic Plates
[astro-ph.IM] Recent studies by B. Villarroel et al. have assembled and analysed datasets of unidentified features measured from digital scans of pre-Sputnik photographic plates. We…
The Dust Mineralogy of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS from JWST/MIRI Observations
[astro-ph.EP] We present the first spectroscopic mineralogical analysis of the dust coma of an interstellar object (ISO) from JWST mid-infrared spectroscopy of 3I/ATLAS (3I). 3I…