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NASA Establishes Mars Forward Operational Risk and Contamination Evaluation (M-FORCE) Tiger Team to Shape Mars Planetary Protection Protocols
[NASA OSMA]. NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA), in partnership with the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), is seeking applicants for a newly established external Tiger Team named Mars Forward Operational Risk and Contamination Evaluation (M‑FORCE). M-FORCE Objectives NASA is seeking highly motivated Subject Matter Experts from academia, industry, national laboratories and the broader planetary science…
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Opportunity to Contribute to NASA DARES Community White Paper on Phototrophic Biosignatures
[Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments RCN] Opportunity to contribute to the “White Paper on…
The Search For Life Elsewhere: Avoiding Hype and Fostering Public Understanding
[Astrobiology (Journal)] The search for life beyond Earth presents unique challenges for science communication due…
Panchromatic Spectra of Nearby Low-mass and Sun-like Stars with Directly Imageable Habitable Zones
[astro-ph.SR] Characterizing the high-energy radiation environments of stars plays a critical role in determining which…
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,…
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Astrogeology
Astronomy & Telescopes
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Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
The Isotopic And Elemental Abundances of Planet-Host Star TRAPPIST-1
[astro-ph.SR]. Elemental and isotopic abundances are key tracers of planet formation, stellar evolution, and Galactic chemical evolution. Very low-mass stars are particularly interesting in this regard, because unlike more massive or evolved stars their photospheric abundances retain the star’s natal composition. Cool dwarf spectra have historically been challenging to use for measurements of chemical abundances…
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NASA ExoExplorers Program: Call For ExoGuide Nominations
This ExoExplorers program, sponsored by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Office and the ExoPAG Executive Committee, will focus on the professional development of ~10 graduate student…
New UC Riverside Lab Focuses on Cutting Edge Astrobiology Tools
[UC Riverside] The Planetary Geochemistry and Astrobiology Laboratory is led by Assistant Professor Fabian Klenner, a new faculty member in UCR’s Department of Earth and…
MBARI Ocean World Expedition: Movement In The Deep
Editor’s note: When we start to mount Astrobiology missions to explore ocean worlds we’ll need ways for our robotic submersibles to observe and interact with…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
Miraflores Butte On Mars
[NASA] NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this sand-capped butte, nicknamed “Miraflores,” estimated to be about 20 feet (6 meters) tall, with its Mast Camera, or…
JWST Color Sequence Of Transiting Exoplanets And Directly Imaged Substellar Objects
[astro-ph.EP] Color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) have been foundational across astrophysics, from galaxies and stars to brown dwarfs, and JWST now extends them to transiting exoplanets and…
Slow-electron-triggered Chemistry In Interstellar Methanol-water Ices
[Astronomy & Astrophysics] Water and, to a lesser extent, methanol are widespread in interstellar space as ices, where sustained exposure to ionizing radiation promotes the…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Nitrogen- And Nitrogen-oxygen-bearing Organic Molecules In Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: An Untargeted Investigation
[astro-ph.EP] Comets provide a unique window into the history of the Solar System as they carry some of the best-preserved material and make it available…
Pandora Mission Begins A Study Of Exoplanets And Their Host Stars
[NASA] Pandora, NASA’s newest exoplanet mission and the first satellite to launch through the agency’s Astrophysics Pioneers program, is now making unique observations of worlds…
Beyond Chlorophyll: Machine Learning Estimates Of Diagnostic Phytoplankton Pigments From Multispectral Ocean Colour Data
[q-bio.OT] Phytoplankton play a central role in marine ecosystems and the global carbon cycle, with different groups contributing differently to ocean biogeochemical processes. While standard…