Unfortunately for science fiction fans, desert worlds outside our solar system are unlikely to host life, according to new research from University of Washington. Scientists show that an Earth-sized planet […]
A research team of Specially Appointed Associate Professor Harrison B. Smith of Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo and Specially Appointed Associate Professor Lana Sinapayen of National […]
The study of planetary habitability beyond Earth remains a central and challenging project in planetary science. Analysis of large volumes of planetary data from space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, […]
This roadmap outlines research pathways to determine whether Mars could be warmed with non-biological methods. It does not presuppose that warming Mars is desirable; its purpose is to identify what […]
It has been hypothesized that the Earth may have experienced snowball events in the past, during which its surface became completely covered with ice. Previous studies used general circulation models […]
The National Academies’ Committee on Planetary Protection is hosting a virtual meeting that will inform NASA’s efforts to develop a prioritized list of factors that contribute to the potential release […]
A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo challenges a long-standing assumption about Earth’s most extreme ice ages. Using numerical geochemical […]
Recent papers by Ansari et al. (2024, Science Advances 10, eadn4650) and Richardson et al. (2025, arXiv eprint 2504.01455) have suggested that global warming of the Martian surface (‘terraforming’) by […]
Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a small set of system-level feasibility constraints linking (i) target pressures and compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to required radiative […]
With future intended human missions to Mars, it is crucial to understand the potential habitability of martian regolith both to support plant growth and to mitigate accidental release of organisms […]
