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Planetary Protection Directive From NASA Administrator Isaacman
NASA Team – NASA aims to expand science across every world we visit, and human exploration of Mars in particular offers an enormous opportunity in the near future. Accordingly, our framework for avoiding harmful contamination must reflect our current scientific knowledge and be informed by the pragmatic implementation plans of robotic and crewed missions we…
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An Earth-like Planet With Two Suns?
[UC Riverside] A nearby star system with two suns could potentially support an Earth-sized planet…
Uncatalyzed Guanosine Phosphorylation under Potentially Prebiotic Conditions
[Chem EurJ] The phosphorylation of nucleosides and their subsequent polymerization are key issues in the…
Ammonia And An Unexpected Chill Discovered On Distant Giant Planet HATS-6 b
[University of Maryland] Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers led…
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
Water Cloud and Chemical Modulations in the Coldest Brown Dwarf
[astro-ph.EP] We present high signal-to-noise, medium resolution (R ~ 1000), time-series JWST/NIRSpec spectra of WISE 0855 (265K), the coldest known brown dwarf. Medium resolution, time-series spectroscopy gives us the power to disentangle the effects of chemistry, temperature, and condensates on this cool world. Our observations span 11 hours with a 15 minute cadence covering 2.87…
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Offworld Expedition Training: Astronauts Explore An Ancient Earth Volcano
[ESA]. From its rim, remnants of recent eruptions lie open for this crew of astronauts learning geology for planetary exploration. Participants of PANGAEA’s 10th edition…
Looking Inside Living Antarctic Cells For The First Time
[British Antarctic Survey] Cambridge engineers have built the first microscope to see inside living cells in sub-zero conditions, revealing secrets of Antarctic fish survival. Editor’s…
On-demand Microfluidic Synthesis Of Silver Nanoparticles For SERS Detection Of Organic Compounds: A Preliminary Feasibility Study For Astrobiology Applications
[Spectrochimica Acta Part A] The detection of organic molecules at trace concentration levels remains a critical challenge for astrobiology research. While Raman spectroscopy is a…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
Enceladus Offers Clues In The Search For Extraterrestrial Life
[Free University Berlin] With a global ocean of liquid water below a thick crust of ice, Saturn’s moon Enceladus is one of the most promising…
Laboratory Evidence that Methanol-Rich Ice Mantles Lower Methyl Formate Binding Energies
[astro-ph.IM] Complex organic molecules are widely detected in star-forming regions and are important precursors to prebiotic species. Because these molecules are thought to form primarily…
A Binary Flux Calibrator Reveals the Scientific Potential of Short-integration JWST MIRI Imaging to Directly Detect sub-Jupiter Exoplanets
[astro-ph.EP] We report the direct imaging detection of a stellar companion to HD 101452 (HIP 56925; Gaia DR3 5384905720847544192), an A star historically used as…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Can AI Detect Life? Lessons From Artificial Life
[cs.LG] Modern machine learning methods have been proposed to detect life in extraterrestrial samples, drawing on their ability to distinguish biotic from abiotic samples based…
Electron Irradiation And Temperature-programmed Desorption Of Layered Ethanolamine-water-methanol Ices
[astro-ph.GA]. Ethanolamine (EtA) is a recently detected interstellar complex organic molecule and a potential precursor to more functionalised N-bearing species. We investigate the electron-driven chemistry…
Multiband Color Monitoring of 3I/ATLAS Through Ground-Based Relay Observations
[astro-ph.EP] We present multiband, long-baseline photometric observations of interstellar comet 3I throughout its 2025–2026 apparition using coordinated ground-based global relay observations. Our dataset combines measurements…