Top Story
Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 28 October 2026: Shoveling Snow In Antarctica
[Dale Andersen] : Hi Keith, A quick note while the base WiFi is up and running. We spent the last two days digging out the entrance to our hut, removing snow that migrated inside over the winter, and getting the snowmobiles and ATV running. Our main goal now is to assemble the shelving we shipped…
Latest
Webb Space Telescope Used To Compare Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS With Icy Bodies In Our Solar System
[SwRI] A Southwest Research Institute-led study used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine ice…
A New Database To Track Origins Of Water From Space
[Rice University]. International collaboration makes decades of satellite data more accessible to scientists studying global…
Offworld Agriculture
Jessica Meir and Anil Menon have been growing Red Russian kale and Wasabi mustard greens…
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
Astronomy & Telescopes
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
The Physical And Chemical Structure Of Titan’s Upper Atmosphere: Energy Balance, Photochemistry And Jeans Escape
[astro-ph.EP] Titan’s upper atmospheric layers provide a unique opportunity to study how photochemistry, photoionisation, haze microphysics and escape processes shape its atmospheric chemical structure, providing a unique benchmark for understanding these processes in exoplanets. Using a 1D first-principles approach, we extend the Kompot model to simulate Titan’s upper atmosphere and investigate its thermal and chemical…
Read moreExploration Gear & Tech
Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 25 October 2026: Hurry Up And Wait
Dale Andersen: “Hurry up and wait.” Anyone who works in the polar regions knows the phrase, and knows the experience: storms, blowing snow, and low…
The Biogeography Of Hydrothermal Vent Giant Viruses Across Earth’s Global Ocean
[biorxiv.org] Viruses are the most abundant known biological entities in the ocean and play central role in microbial ecology. However, the patterns and drivers of…
Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 20 Oct 2026: Wheels Down In Cape Town
[Dale Andersen]: The 787 Dreamliner rolled to a stop far out on the apron, as the big jets often do here, and I climbed down…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
UCLCHEM 4.0: An Open Source Gas-grain Astrochemistry Simulation Framework
[astro-ph.GA] Astrochemical modeling is a key tool for the understanding of the formation and destruction of molecules in the dense gas of the interstellar medium,…
Tentative Detection of FeS toward Orion SrcI
[astro-ph.GA] Iron sulfide (FeS) is a key refractory compound in astrophysical environments. It is commonly found in meteorites and evidence of FeS has only been…
Isobaric Crystallization of Aqueous Magnesium Chloride Solutions at Icy Moon Conditions
[ACS] Subsurface oceans inside icy moons are expected to contain dissolved salts whose crystallization controls the mineralogy of their hydrospheres and potentially their surfaces. Here,…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Perseverance Rover Offers Clues to Protect Crews From Mars Dust
[NASA]. By studying tiny particles clinging to spacesuit samples aboard the rover, scientists could help develop better ways to reduce astronauts’ exposure to dust on…
A Technical Reanalysis Of The Viking Carbon Assimilation-Pyrolytic Release Experiment
[astro-ph.IM]. Viking Lander: The 1976 Viking Carbon Assimilation-Pyrolytic Release (CAPyR) experiment tested whether carbon from 14CO2 and 14CO entered Martian soil during a 120-hour incubation…
Novel Antarctic Chemolithotroph Drives Iron Biomineralization
[Microbiome] Background: Iron, the most abundant redox-active metal in the Earth’s crust, is coupled to numerous biogeochemi- cal cycles. However, the mechanisms of iron oxidation…