Editor’s note: NASA Science Mission Directorate held a Community Town Hall on 26 October 2026. One of the questions that was posted in advanced was asked concerning NASA Astrobiology. Audio […]
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Posted inSpace Life Science
AI-Run Growth Chamber Will Test How Plants Develop in Microgravity Against a Matching Experiment on Earth
[Voyager Technologies] (NYSE: VOYG) executed a mission management contract with Interstellar Lab to host BioPod EDEN, the company’s autonomous plant growth payload, aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Posted inMars
Perseverance Rover Offers Clues to Protect Crews From Mars Dust
[NASA]. By studying tiny particles clinging to spacesuit samples aboard the rover, scientists could help develop better ways to reduce astronauts’ exposure to dust on Mars.
Posted inSPACELINE Current Awareness List
NASA Spaceline Current Awareness List #1,222 23 October 2026 (Space Life Science Research Results)
[NASA] The abstract in PubMed or at the publisher’s site is linked when available and will open in a new window.
![Left. Two-dimensional UMAP representation of the TMC-1 inventory using the original ChemBERTa input vectors. Right. Same representation but using the last hidden layer of the neural netwok model. The red rectangle highlights the region of the UMAP representation where highly abundant molecules are located. The different dot sizes represent the observed column density of each molecule. -- [astro-ph.GA]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/A-neural.png?resize=1200%2C725&ssl=1)
Posted inAstrochemistry
A Neural-network Model To Find Correlations In Astrochemical Space
[astro-ph.GA] The detection of new interstellar molecules is central to astrochemistry, and arguably the most transformative development in the field in past decade has been the increase in both number […]
![Schematic diagram of the Fragmented Pupil telescope concept. Left Panel: Bright stars available over ∼degree scale optical fields are condensed into an artificial cluster at sub-arcminute scales (red box). Middle Panel: This is accomplished in a single reflection from a high-stability tessellated optical surface aboard a stable space telescope. Right Panel: Precision astrometric monitoring can then be accomplished by analysis of the resulting well-sampled interferograms in the image plane. Here the central science target is surrounded by a set of 6 reference stars, condensed to lie at arcsecond scales. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Astrometric-detection.png?resize=1200%2C555&ssl=1)
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Astrometric Detection Of Rocky Exoplanets From Inexpensive Space Platforms
[astro-ph.IM] The detection of orbiting exoplanets by way of astrometric monitoring of the host star to reveal gravitationally induced reflex motion requires extreme precision and measurement stability when targeting Earth-mass […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
The First Selection Of Optimal Targets For The Lazuli ExtraSolar Coronagraph’s Reflected Starlight Exoplanet Campaign
[astro-ph.EP] Direct detection and characterization of exoplanet atmospheres via reflected starlight enables probes of composition of mature exoplanet systems (since flux is decoupled from age) at closer separations than via […]
![Global map of Enceladus with color and contours indicating the estimated heat flux (in mWm−2 ) calculated from maps of shell thickness [Hemingway and Mittal, 2019]. Our results (Table 1) are plotted as lines using the same color scale as the background. Green labeled boxes show other estimates [Giese et al., 2008; Bland et al., 2012, 2007; Leonard et al., 2021] of paleo-heat fluxes using similar methods.-- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Paleoheat.png?resize=1200%2C721&ssl=1)
Posted inEnceladus
Paleo-heat Flux Estimates Across Enceladus Derived From Flexural Response Of The Ice Shell
[astro-ph.EP] Saturn’s moon Enceladus has active plumes suggestive of locally high heat fluxes at present, and the present-day heating is reasonably well characterized. However, the moon’s thermal history is not […]
Posted inDale Andersen's Field Reports
Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 26 October 2026: Flying South
Keith’s note: This report may be updated over the course of the day. Dale’s departure from Cape Town was scheduled for 10:00 am Local time but ended up at 10:28 […]
Posted inUncategorized
Complex Organic Molecules in Protostars with ALMA Spectral Surveys (COMPASS): I. Overview of the ALMA Large Program
[astro-ph.GA] It remains a fundamental research question in astrochemistry to characterize the inventory of complex organic molecules formed during the early stages of star formation, which may affect the eventual […]