Top Story
Astrobiology Graduate Conference (AbGradCon26) Update
Editors’ note from Keith Cowing, Astrobiology.com: I’m happy to have Astrobiology.com serve as one of the sponsors of AbGradCon 2026. I have been involved with NASA Astrobiology since the very first organizational meetings at NASA Ames in 1996 and 1997. When websites were still a new thing I hosted the first two Astrobiology Science Conference…
Latest
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…
Mass Wasting On Mars
[NASA] Scarps such as this have either active mass wasting (landslides) or the potential for…
The Hill Sphere Transits of Beta Pictoris c and The Search for Another 1981-like Event
[astro-ph.EP]. Beta Pictoris is a young and nearby planetary system hosting an edge-on debris disk…
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
![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
Thermal Anomaly Discovered Below Mars’s South Pole
[Caltech]. Based on gravitational measurements that give clues to the Red Planet’s interior structure, Mars’s interior southern hemisphere is around 200 to 400 degrees Celsius warmer than the northern half of the planet and partially molten. The surprising finding adds additional context to Martian history and the periods of time in which it may have…
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
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…
The Refractory Fraction Of Phosphorus In Planet-forming Discs
[astro-ph.EP] Context. Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for life on Earth and a potential tracer of planet formation history. However, there has been no…
The Venus Benchmark: Resolving Degeneracies in Terrestrial Exoplanet Spectra with DAVINCI
[astro-ph.EP]. The characterization of terrestrial exoplanets with thick, CO2-dominated atmospheres via transmission and emission spectroscopy is limited by degeneracies between atmospheric composition, cloud structure, and…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Prebiotic Cationic Amino Acids Support Formation Of An Ancient Protein Fold
[biorxiv.org] The evolutionary basis for the selection of the standard proteinogenic amino acids remains elusive, particularly for the long cationic amino acids, lysine and arginine,…
Iron Helped Scientists Trace Earth’s Oxygen. Now It’s Telling A Bigger Story
[Michigan State University] For decades, scientists have studied iron preserved in ancient rocks to reconstruct how Earth’s oceans and atmosphere became rich in oxygen. A…
Determining The “Biosignature Threshold” For Life Detection On Biotic, Abiotic, or Prebiotic Worlds.
[Astrobiology (Journal) via PubMed] The field of prebiotic chemistry has demonstrated that complex organic chemical systems that exhibit various life-like properties can be produced abiotically…