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Topic: Astrobiology

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took this image of Ceres’ south polar region on May 17, 2017. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

Dwarf planet could reveal origin of life

Elizabeth Howell
Saturn's moon Enceladus (Getty Images/dottedhippo)

Scientists recreate a Saturn moon in lab

Matthew Rozsa
NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) stores rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars. (NASA/Getty Images)

Mars rover finds signatures of life

Matthew Rozsa
Planet Saturn (Getty Images/Science Photo Library/MARK GARLICK)

Ingredient for life found on Saturn moon

Matthew Rozsa
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Planet Venus (Getty Images/3quarks)

NASA changes its mind about Venus

Matthew Rozsa
Artist’s conception of a rocky Earth-mass exoplanet, called Kepler-1649c, orbiting a red dwarf star. (NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter)

The planet down the block is a lot

Nicole Karlis
Earth with a dunce cap, and a UFO passing by (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

Are we primitive compared to aliens?

Troy Farah
Jupiter's large moon, Europa, is covered by a thick crust of ice above a vast ocean of liquid water (Getty Images/Ron Miller/Stocktrek Images)

Jupiter's moon may have secret lakes

Matthew Rozsa
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Digitally created space scene with the orbital view on the Earth-like planet and it's moons (Getty Images/Lev Savitskiy)

Two new Earth-like planets discovered

Troy Farah
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star on July 12, 2022 in space. The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb's unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)

How Webb telescope will search for E.T.

Chris Impey, Daniel Apai - The Conversation
The James Webb Space Telescope hovering over Earth, concept (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

Astronomy doubles down on search for ET

Nicole Karlis
Saturn's moon Enceladus (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Is there life on one of Saturn's moons?

Nicole Karlis
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Illustration of alien plants on a hospitable foreign planet (Getty Images)

A zoologist imagines alien life

Emily Cataneo - Undark
A computer simulation of the surface of the planet Venus, circa 1990. (Space Frontiers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Scientific drama on Venus continues

Nicole Karlis
This is an artist's concept of a plume of water vapor thought to be ejected off the frigid, icy surface of the Jovian moon Europa, located about 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) from the sun. Spectroscopic measurements from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope led scientists to calculate that the plume rises to an altitude of 125 miles (201 kilometers) and then it probably rains frost back onto the moon's surface. Previous findings already pointed to a subsurface ocean under Europa's icy crust. (NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)

Jupiter's moon Europa teems with water

Nicole Karlis
Artist's concept of a dust storm on Titan (NASA/ESA/IPGP/Labex UnivEarthS/University Paris Diderot)

Scientists discover dust storms on Titan

Keith A. Spencer
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(Getty/dottedhippo)

Martian lakes and the chance for life

Nicole Karlis
(Getty/rajeshbac)

Liquid water on Mars! For real this time

Emily Lakdawalla - Sky & Telescope
(Getty/rajeshbac)

Mars: NASA finds building blocks of life

Keith A. Spencer
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will identify exoplanets orbiting the brightest stars just outside our solar system. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

Our best chance to find Earth 2

Nicole Karlis
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(Getty/rajeshbac)

Young Mars had lakes, global warming

Jennie Neufeld
This first official picture of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I was issued in Moscow October 9, 1957, showing the four-antennaed satellite resting on a three-legged pedestal. (AP/Zentralbild Picture Service)

Caleb Scharf - Nautilus
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