ejecta Archives - Astrobiology

A piece of Mars ejecta in space -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Astrogeology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Impact events, Mars, Meteorites & Asteroids, Panspermia, Status Report

Could Life Have Been Transferred From Mars To Earth? Laboratory And Computational Simulations Of Martian Ejecta

by Keith CowingMay 18, 2026May 18, 2026

The study of the origin of life on Earth has been broadened due to panspermia models that suggest that early life may have been transferred between planets.

Suggested citation: Leonard, E., Patthoff, D. A., and Senske, D., 2024, Global geologic map of Europa: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3513, scale 1:15,000,000, pamphlet 18 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/sim3513.

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Jupiter, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

USGS Online Interactive Map Of Europa

by Keith CowingJune 11, 2024June 11, 2024

Europa, the second inner Jovian Galilean satellite, is believed to contain a global liquid water ocean covered by an ice shell likely 10s of kilometers thick. The paucity of impact […]

Global mosaic of Europa showing the locations of Pwyll and Manann´an craters. Pwyll crater, one of Europa’s youngest impact features, is ∼27 km in diameter, surrounded by a dark ring of proximal ejecta, and has an extensive bright ray ejecta which extends as far as 1000 km and stands in stark contrast to the darker reddish surface of Europa’s trailing hemisphere. Manann´an crater is ∼23 km in diameter, also has a dark, red ring of proximal ejecta, and is surrounded by a much less extensive bright ray system which extends up to ∼120 km and covers nearby young terrain including chaos terrains in Dyfed Regio and the triple band Belus linea. The location of the trailing hemisphere apex (0◦ N, 270◦ W) is indicated with a star. This mosaic map, created by Steve Albers, blends an existing color map from NASA/JPL/Bj¨orn J´onsson created using color images from Voyager and Galileo, the high-resolution black and white mosaic from USGS, and additional higher resolution imagery from Galileo and Juno. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Impact events, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Space Weather & Heliophysics, Status Report

Pwyll and Manannán Craters as a Laboratory for Constraining Irradiation Timescales on Europa

by Keith CowingApril 25, 2024April 25, 2024

We examine high spatial resolution Galileo/NIMS observations of the young (~1 My – 20 My) impact features, Pwyll and Manannán craters, on Europa’s trailing hemisphere in an effort to constrain […]

Sizes and densities of potential icy ocean worlds, compared to the Earth (image source: NASA).

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Europa, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Icy Ocean Worlds, Plumes, And Tasting The Water

by Keith CowingMarch 27, 2024March 27, 2024

This paper considers how space missions that fly through the plumes known, or suspected, to erupt naturally from some icy ocean worlds (IOW), such as Enceladus, or that aim to […]

SEM micrographs of glycine-glutamine ejecta

Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Icy Worlds, Impact events, Meteorites & Asteroids, Panspermia, Status Report

New Signatures of Bio-Molecular Complexity in the Hypervelocity Impact Ejecta of Icy Moon Analogues

by Keith CowingFebruary 1, 2023February 1, 2023

Impact delivery of prebiotic compounds to the early Earth from an impacting comet is considered to be one of the possible ways by which prebiotic molecules arrived on the Earth.

Icy Worlds, Panspermia

Seeding Life on the Moons of the Outer Planets via Lithopanspermia

by Keith CowingNovember 12, 2013

Material from the surface of a planet can be ejected into space by a large impact, and could carry primitive life forms with it. We performed n-body simulations of such […]