"Is fulgorite associated with meteorites, and if so, what kind of microbial life, if any, is associated with it?"
Content with the tag: “life in our solar system”
Determine any past or present habitable environments, prebiotic chemistry and signs of life elsewhere in our Solar System. Characterize the history of any environments having liquid water, chemical ingredients and energy sources that might have sustained living systems. Explore crustal materials and planetary atmospheres for any evidence of past and/or present life.
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Mars Science Laboratory Shakedown in the High Arctic
Members of the AMASE team (AMASE stands for Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition) last month completed their fourth field season on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen. They went to test out instruments similar to those that will fly on an upcoming mission to Mars, and to perform a field test of a prototype rover, Cliff-bot, that is capable of climbing up and down 80-degree slopes.
Spitsbergen is the largest island in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, which lies between...
February 1, 2008 / Posted by: Yael Kovo
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Hydrocarbons on Saturn's Moon Hyperion
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed for the first time surface details of Saturn’s moon Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons that may indicate more widespread presence in our solar system of basic chemicals necessary for life.
August 5, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe
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Looking for Life in All the Right Places
This new video from JPL shows how NASA astrobiologists are gathering exciting clues that will help them pick the best spots to search for possible signs of life beyond Earth.
July 29, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe
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Extracellular Protein-Metal Aggregates: A New Biosignature?
Deep inside a flooded mine in Wisconsin, scientists from NAI’s University of California, Berkeley Team have discovered an environment in which bacteria emit proteins that sweep up metal nanoparticles into immobile clumps. Their finding may lead to innovative ways to remediate subsurface metal toxins, and have exciting implications for identifying biosignatures on Earth and other worlds. The research, published in the June 14th issue of Science, was done in collaboration with a team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence...
June 13, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe
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Salinity of Europa's Ocean
New research from NAI’s SETI Institute Team published online in Icarus today outlines the empirical range of salt concentrations permitted for Europa’s ocean. Solutions within the range imply high, near-saturation salt concentrations and require a Europan ice shell of less than 15 km thick, with a best fit at 4 km ice thickness. The paper examines the implications for subsurface habitability.
February 26, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe
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Liquid Water on Mars: Is It Still Flowing?
The scientific strategy of NASA’s Mars exploration can be summarized as “Follow the water.” The habitability of Mars, past or present, is intimately tied to the presence of liquid water. Since the first orbiting spacecraft, Mariner 9, surveyed the planet in the early 1970s, we have known that the Mars polar caps are composed in part of ice, and we have seen large channels cut by water that flowed on the surface billions of years ago. Two of the most important recent discoveries on Mars were “gullies” that indicate much more recent surface flows, less than a million years old, and the evidence from rovers on the surface that shallow ponds or seas of salty water must have once existed, although they may have been transient. However, all these indications of surface water are old – whether the age is measured in millions or billions of years. Now, in what looks to be one of the most important recent discoveries about Mars, we have photographic evidence that flows of liquid water have taken place in the past seven years! The change of perspective from billions or millions of years to something that happened in the twenty-first century could be profound.
January 9, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe
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NAI Scientists Successfully Drill into Subglacial Lake
Last month, scientists from NAI’s University of Hawai’i Team, in collaboration with Icelandic research institutes, successfully drilled into and sampled a lake deep beneath a glacier in Iceland. The lake and other subglacial lakes are the focus of studies of life in “extreme environments,” and may resemble potential habitats on Mars and icy satellites in the outer Solar System
July 6, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe
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