Top Story
A Martian Horizon Last Monday Afternoon
This panel of two images was taken by Mars Perseverance rover at Jezero crater on Sol 1965 using its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) The camera is located high on the rover’s mast and aids in driving. Much Larger panorama Astrobiology,
Latest
Habitable-zone Earths At The Detection Frontier: Measured Completeness And False-alarm Rate Of A Transit Pipeline For The PLATO M-dwarf Sample
[astro-ph.EP] The PLATO mission will observe its first long-pointing field, LOPS2 (Long-duration Observation Phase, South…
A Homogeneous Survey Of JWST MIRI Transmission Spectra Of 10 Exoplanets
[astro-ph.EP] The launch of JWST has enabled unprecedented atmospheric characterization of exoplanets. In particular, the…
Retrieving Ocean Glint Reflectance Signatures From Directly Imaged Earth-like Exoplanets
[astro-ph.EP] Future space telescopes searching for extraterrestrial life require methods to detect environments that can…
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
![NASA SMD ROSES-25 Amendment 68: New Opportunity: D.8 Habitable Worlds Observatory Precursor Science Investigations [UPDATE 2]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/HWO.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1)
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
Mass Wasting On Mars
[NASA] Scarps such as this have either active mass wasting (landslides) or the potential for current mass wasting. When this occurs, it’s likely the result of the sublimation of ice that dislodges darker subsurface material as we can see in various parts of this image footprint. We also want to to make a comparison to…
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 Curiosity Reaches 1-Kilometer Elevation Gain
[NASA]. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover reached the pinnacle — so far — of its 14-year-old mission on Aug. 26, 2026, when it marked an elevation…
The Ultraviolet Spectrograph on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer Mission (JUICE-UVS)
[astro-ph.EP] A mix of internal and external radiation shielding plates are used, with those on the instrument electronics plus spectrograph sections shown here in gold…
Accelerating Chemical Kinetics For Exoplanet Atmospheres Using Neural Networks
[astro-ph.EP] Observations increasingly reveal the coupled radiative, chemical, and dynamical processes that shape exoplanet atmospheres. Interpreting these atmospheres requires models that can capture this complexity.…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
The Emergence Of Life In The Light Of Evolution
[q-bio.PE] The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life s defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry…
ReactionAtlas: Ab Origine Exploration Of Chemical Reaction Networks With Machine Learning
[cs.LG] Mapping a chemical reaction network, the graph of minima and transition states (TS) and the elementary reactions connecting them, is the natural language of…
ExMODE: A Comprehensive Resource For Extremophile Genomic And Functional Exploration
[iMetaOmics] ExMODE (https://db.genomics.cn/exmode/) integrates 3518 samples to build a unified extremophile resource, which hosts 1.35 billion habitat-specific non-redundant genes, 5.25 million representative protein structures, 67,026…