Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has received a three-year, $2,999,998 million grant from NASA to identify and characterize life and its biosignatures in frozen sand dunes in Alaska, under conditions similar […]
Determining a reliable method to detect life on another planet is an essential first step in the pursuit of discovering extraterrestrial life.
In 1928, Indian physicist Sir C. V. Raman and his colleague K. S. Krishnan discovered that when light interacts with matter, parts of the scattered light undergo changes in energy […]
Ice is believed to have played a crucial role in the emergence of life. One reason is that organic molecules can be excluded into the gaps between the crystal lattice […]
The main advantage of Raman spectroscopy over competing analytical instruments used in robotic planetary missions is the capability to identify both organic and inorganic molecules.
After some time off the road, vehicles require proper maintenance checks. The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover is no exception and got an upgrade to one of its electronic boxes in […]
The NASA Raman Spectroscopic Database (Ramdb) was developed to provide a publicly accessible, user-friendly database for spectra relevant to the planetary science community.
No instrument capable of direct life detection has been included on a mission payload to Mars since NASA’s Viking missions in the 1970s. This prevents us from discovering whether life […]
Organic chemistry is ubiquitous in the Solar System, and both Mars and a number of icy satellites of the outer Solar System show substantial promise for having hosted or hosting […]
The CM chondrites are characterized as primary accretionary rocks which originate from primitive water-rich asteroids formed during the early Solar System.
