[ESA] The footage shows the simultaneous deployment of two landing legs from the ExoMars landing platform, in two sequential pairs.
Habitable Zones
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Searching For Habitable Exoplanets With Relative Astrometry (SHERA). I. The Case For Searching For Planets In Binary Star Systems
[astro-ph.EP] Discovering Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars was identified as a priority science goal of the Astronomy 2020 Decadal Survey.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
MarsCast: Transfer Learning Of AI Weather Foundation Models To Planetary Atmospheres
[astro-ph.EP] We investigate the transferability of Earth weather foundation models to planetary atmospheres by adapting the GraphCast graph neural weather forecasting model to Mars. While GraphCast achieves state-of-the-art performance for […]
![Life 2.0 mission concept and simulated biosignature spectroscopy. The distributed array observes a common target with many one-meter telescope modules. The example spectra illustrate UV-optical atmospheric signatures and the simulated recovery of O₃, O₂, and H₂O after calibrated spectral co-addition. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Life-2.0.jpg?resize=1200%2C719&ssl=1)
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology
Life 2.0: A Scalable Distributed Space-Telescope Array For Biosignature Spectroscopy
[astro-ph.IM] Answering the question “Are we alone?” requires atmospheric spectroscopy of nearby terrestrial planets. For an Earth–Sun analog, even the strongest transmission signals are expected to be of order 1 […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
Quantifying Detection Bias And Recovering Habitable Zone Occurrence Rates In The NASA Exoplanet Archive
[Astronomy and Computing] Transit surveys tend to underestimate how often habitable zone (HZ) planets appear. The core reason is geometric: the chance that an Earth-like planet transits a sun-like star […]
![Latitude-longitude maps of column-integrated water clouds (panels a, b and c), outgoing longwave radiation (OLR, panels d, e and f) and albedo at the top of the atmosphere (TOA albedo, panels g, h and i) for Cases 2A, 2B and 2C. The variables are averaged over ∼50 orbits. The dashed white line on the albedo color bar corresponds to the surface albedo.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/A-broad.png?resize=1200%2C719&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
A Broad Exploration Of Climate And Observability Of Close-in Rocky Exoplanets: Applications To Ross 128 b
[astro-ph.EP] VLT/RISTRETTO, ELT/ANDES and ELT/PCS will soon enable atmospheric characterization of non-transiting, small rocky exoplanets orbiting closer than the inner edge of the Habitable Zone around M dwarfs, combining high-contrast […]
Posted inAstrogeology
High Solubility Of Water In Post-perovskite And Bridgmanite In The Earth’s Deep Lower Mantle
[physics.geo-ph] Water in the Earth’s mantle induces melting, giving rise to strong chemical heterogeneity, and alters its rheological and transport properties, which are keys to understanding seismic-wave speeds anomalies, convective […]
Posted inArctic / Antarctic / Alpine
Molecular Evidence For A Relict Marine Community In An Antarctic Dry Valleys Subglacial Brine-fed System
[Nature] The McMurdo Dry Valleys contain a mosaic of specialized microbial habitats structured by strong physical and chemical gradients.
![Pollux optical layout. The exact sequence in the optical path of the retractable polarimeters and fiber link connections of the OPT and NIR is still to be discussed and what shown here is not representative of the final configuration. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pollux.png?resize=1200%2C715&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Pollux: High-resolution Precision Spectroscopy And Polarimetry For The Habitable Worlds Observatory
[astro-ph.IM] Pollux is a high-resolution spectrograph and spectropolarimeter (R from 65000 to 100000) covering a spectral range from 100 nm to 1750 nm, proposed by a European consortium to equip […]
![Retrieved emission spectra (blue regions) plotted with the true planet’s flux from our forward model (red) for each redox state considered (IW-6 to IW+6). The retrieved spectra denser region represents the 1𝜎 confidence level, intermediate region 2𝜎, thin region the 3𝜎 level. The observational noise from LIFEsim is shown as a gray envelope. The retrieved spectra capture most spectral features in observed planets, especially in the more pronounced oxidised cases (bottom row). -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Characterizing-the.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Characterizing The Oxidation State Of Rocky Exoplanets With The Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE)
[astro-ph.EP] The oxidation state of rocky exoplanets is expected to play a fundamental role in shaping the chemical composition of their secondary atmospheres by influencing the chemical composition of volcanically […]