The search for life beyond Earth has long been guided by two dominant paradigms: astrobiology, which seeks environments capable of supporting life as we know it, and planetary engineering, which […]
In Titan’s atmosphere, the chemistry of small hydrocarbons and nitriles represent an important link from molecular species to the ubiquitous organic haze that gives Titan its characteristic yellow color.
We present spatially resolved Keck/NIRC2 images of a stellar occultation by Titan on September 5, 2022 and compare them to predictions from concurrent ALMA observations and a suite of General […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has begun to spectrally characterize small exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars, but interpretation of these spectra is ambiguous, with stellar, instrumental, or atmospheric origins possible […]
In the study presented here, we model the gas phase chemistry induced by plasma discharge at low temperature (150 K) in the NASA Ames COSmIC Simulation Chamber (COSmIC) using a […]
Dragonfly, a rotorcraft lander that will fly like a large drone, is designed to gather samples from Saturn’s moon Titan, characterize Titan’s habitability, and look for precursors of the origin […]
NASA’s Dragonfly mission has cleared several key design, development and testing milestones and remains on track toward launch in July 2028.
![[LEFT] Titan [RIGHT] Uranus -- NASA.gov](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Photochemical-Haze-Formation.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
The formation and evolution of haze layers in planetary atmospheres play a critical role in shaping their chemical composition, radiative balance, and optical properties.
Evidence for the beneficial role of impacts in the creation of urable or habitable environments on Earth prompts the question of whether meteorite impacts could play a similar role at […]
NASA research has shown that cell-like compartments called vesicles could form naturally in the lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan.
