[NASA] A newly released panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover offers the most detailed view yet of distant, wind-carved Martian cliffs, highlighting features the mission’s scientists have long been waiting […]
Keith Cowing
Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻
Posted inPolicy
Possible News From The Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences Meeting
Editor’s note: The National Academy’s Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences Autumn 2026 Meeting is being held 6-8 October Tuesday – Thursday this week. According to the agenda there are […]
Posted inSPACELINE Current Awareness List
NASA Spaceline Current Awareness List #1,219 2 October 2026 (Space Life Science Research Results)
The abstract in PubMed or at the publisher’s site is linked when available and will open in a new window.
![Simulated climates and observables for CO2-rich planets near the outer edge of the habitable zone. The illustration on the right depicts a potentially habitable world orbiting a Sun-like star. The teal point in the lower left section of the panel marks the orbital location of such a planet within the OHZ, and the corresponding reflected light spectrum that could be observed via direct imaging is shown in teal in the middle, left section of the panel. The upper left section of the panel shows an illustration of the same planet in a globally frozen state located just beyond the habitable zone. Its orbital position (lower left) and reflected light spectrum (middle) are shown in white. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/High-CO2.png?resize=1200%2C721&ssl=1)
Posted inHabitable Zones
High-CO2 Climates And Observables In The Outer Habitable Zone
[astro-ph.EP] The habitable zone (HZ) is a fundamental concept used to guide our search for temperate exoplanets with stable surface liquid water that would sustain remotely detectable biosignatures.
![Schematic representation of the evolution of sulfur in light of our experiments. The diagram provides a conceptual overview of sulfur depletion driven by visual extinction.-- [astro-ph.GA]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Thermally.png?resize=1200%2C719&ssl=1)
Posted inAstrochemistry
Thermally Irreversible Sulfur Chemisorption On Silicate Grains As A Major Sulfur Reservoir In Molecular Clouds
[astro-ph.GA] Sulfur (S) chemistry in the interstellar medium remains poorly constrained due to the longstanding “missing sulfur” problem, where a significant fraction of cosmic sulfur in molecular clouds remains unidentified.
![Initial 𝑎c–𝑒c distribution of the 32,000 comets used in each end-to-end calculation. Dashed lines mark the semimajor axes of P7 and P8. The circular and eccentric planet calculations use identical comet initial states.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Planetary.png?resize=1200%2C604&ssl=1)
Posted inComets and Asteroids
Planetary Eccentricity Enhances Inward Comet Transport But Suppresses Gentle Impacts
[astro-ph.EP] Comets can supply volatile and prebiotic material to rocky planets, but survival of fragile molecules depends on atmospheric entry and impact. Compact planet chains can transfer comets inward at […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Detecting Extragalactic Exoplanets With Fast Radio Burst Nanolensing
[astro-ph.EP] Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are spatially and temporally compact sources at cosmological distances. As background sources, they will be uniquely sensitive to the gravitational lensing of exoplanets outside of […]
![Illustration of the different size averages for Renazzo (after the data of Ebel et al. (2024)) on a back-scattered electron image of polished section 719sp3 of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle collection (Jacquet et al., 2012).-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Chondrule.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inAstrogeology
Chondrule Size Averaging In Two And Three Dimensions
[astro-ph.EP] Chondrule sizes are an important discriminant of chondrite groups and chondrule formation theories. Yet most studies report 2D sizes without attempting the somewhat tedious corrections to 3D proposed in […]
![Observation and modeling of the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC). (A) Observation by the Mars Express VMC imager41,42, at 8.5 a.m. Local Time. (B) Reference simulation assuming only heterogeneous nucleation, at 8.1 a.m. Local Time. (C) Same as B, but with homogeneous nucleation added. See also supplementary video S1.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Homogeneous.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inMars
Homogeneous Nucleation of Water Vapor Evidenced by Elongated Clouds on Mars
[astro-ph.EP] It is widely accepted that water vapor forms clouds by heterogeneous nucleation (condensation on pre-existing dry nuclei).
![SpeX SXD spectrum of TOI-6981. The target spectrum (red) is shown alongside that of the M3.5V standard Luyten’s Star (grey), offset vertically for clarity. Regions of strong telluric absorption are shaded, and strong M-dwarf spectral features are indicated. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/TOI-6981.png?resize=1200%2C718&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
TOI-6981 b: A Transiting Sub-Neptune At The Water Ice Line
[astro-ph.EP] We present TOI-6981 b, a cold (Teq= 170.0 +/-4.5 K, assuming an Earth-like albedo) sub-Neptune (Rb=2.40+/-0.10 R⊕) on a 60.8 day orbit around around its M4-type host star (R*=0.304 […]