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Perseverance Astrobiology Droid Has Completed A Martian Marathon
On June 14, 2026, Mars Perseverance rover completed a Martian “marathon” by surpassing 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) of travel. The day before, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this view of the rover and its tracks from space. NASA’s Perseverance rover appears as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, a day…
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Machine Learning And Deep Learning For Exoplanet Detection And Atmospheric Characterization With JWST And The Upcoming Ariel Mission
The detection and atmospheric characterization of exoplanets have entered a new data-intensive era driven by…
Bioleaching Of Critical Trace Metals By Sphingomonas Desiccabilis: Substrate-driven Selectivity In Earth And Space Analogues
Background – Biotechnological advances are transforming the potential for sustainable resource utilization in space exploration.…
TESS Reveals The Puffiest Exoplanets Ever Found
Data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has revealed two new “super-puff” planets,…
An Agnostic Machine Learning Model of Photosynthetic Habitability
The search for exoplanet biosignatures is guided by whether planetary environments can sustain photosynthesis. As…
NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Binaries Project
Some stars have planets. Others are orbited by brown dwarfs, balls of gas too massive…
Astrochemistry
Input Sought: Review of Progress Toward the Decadal Survey Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s
The National Academies’ decadal survey, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s…
Reaction Mechanisms and Kinetics of CN and CCH with H2CS: Implications for Interstellar Sulfur Chemistry
We report an ab initio and master-equation investigation of the gas-phase reactions of thioformaldehyde (H2CS)…
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Arrives In Florida Ahead of Launch
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrived June 21, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center…
Earth As A Potential Source Of Llife For Europa’s Subsurface Ocean
The paper discusses the possibility of dust particles containing living bacteria ejected from Earth reaching Europa and landing on its surface. It is shown that, taking certain factors into account, over a period of 30 − 80 Myr (the estimated age of Europa’s ocean), Jupiter’s moon would have been impacted…
Keep readingDust To Dust: Prospects For Passive Technosignatures As Relics Of ETI
Technological societies are separated in time, not just space — that is the lesson of the Drake equation. Might the best way to seek them be to find technosignatures that persist long after their creators? I present work I and my collaborators have done on the idea of passive technosignatures,…
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Astronomy & Telescopes
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
Turbulence-coupled Electrodynamics Of The Martian Year 34 Global Dust Storm On Mar
We studied the electrodynamic environment during the Martian year 34 (MY 34) global dust storm using data from the Mars Climate Database v.6.1. Our physics-based approach looked at triboelectric charging, atmospheric conductivity, and electrostatic breakdown using the Paschen criterion. We aimed to find out when and where the lower atmosphere could support electric fields strong…
Read moreExploration Gear & Tech
Tricorder Tech: ESA CAVES 2026 Cavenauts Use An Electronic FieldBook
Astronauts Tracy Dyson (NASA), Rosemary Coogan (ESA) and Ayu Yoneda (JAXA) measuring water parameters and recording them in the Electronic FieldBook during ESA CAVES2026 course.…
Lipid Biomarkers In Microbialites From A Maar Lake: An Astrobiological Study Of Biomarker Preservation under Mars Analog Conditions
Lipids constitute resistant biomarkers that have been proposed as pacemakers in the search for possible microbial life-forms in Mars’ past. The extreme conditions on the…
Astrobiology In The Time of Artificial Intelligence
The Viking missions showcased multiple spaceflight technologies representing state-of-the-art capabilities: from digital line-scan imaging to the operation of complex onboard laboratories and software-controlled process autonomy.…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
How To Actually Build Your Own Working Tricorder
Editor’s note: Hamzah Abugosh has built a functional tricorder. I share the same fascination he has with the notion of a Tricorder as seen on…
Water Planet Recon: New AI Approach Reveals Earth’s Ocean Currents In Unprecedented Detail
Editor’s note: when our first missions – human or robotic – arrive at a new world we’ll want to do glean as much information from…
Caltech Readies To Build World’s Most Sensitive Radio Telescope
Our cosmos is awash with radio waves, originating from fierce jets blasting out of distant black holes, blinking dead stars closer to home, and many…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Hydrothermal Origin Of Metabolic Phosphorylation
Phosphate is central to modern bioenergetics and to all theories for the origin of life. How phosphate entered metabolism is unknown, though microbial physiology and…
Energy-Limited Radiolytic Habitability in the Shallow Martian Subsurface: Implications for ExoMars Rosalind Franklin and Tianwen-3
The surface of Mars is sterilized by ionizing radiation and pervasive oxidants; its shallow subsurface, shielded from ultraviolet light and the most reactive oxidation, may…
Coordinated Proteome-scale Remodeling Underlies Polyextremophilic Survival In Antarctic Cryo-hypersaline Brines
Introduction – Cryo-hypersaline brines combine sub-zero temperatures with near-saturated salinity, creating one of Earth’s most extreme habitats. Antarctic Deep Lake provides a natural model for…