astrobiology

Only 6.6% of surveyed astrobiologists agreed that scientists had probably found extraterrestrial life on exoplanet K2-18b.

Scientists have discovered that huge clay deposits near the landing site of the upcoming ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover are much larger than previously thought. The finding strengthens the idea that large amounts of water once existed on Mars and may even suggest that a vast ocean covered part of the planet around 4 billion years […] The post Ancient Martian ocean? Vast clay deposits may hold cl…

Nature Astronomy, Published online: 05 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02876-9 Following two major 2025 announcements of possible extraterrestrial life — on exoplanet K2-18 b in April and in the Cheyava Falls rock on Mars in September — we surveyed the astrobiology community to capture the spread of expert opinion. These datasets establish baseline measures of scientific confidence in each case…

A new NASA-supported study suggests that Jupiter may have played a surprisingly important role in helping Earth acquire some of the key ingredients needed for life more than 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists have long wondered where Earth got essential elements such as phosphorus and nitrogen, which are necessary for living organisms. These elements are […] The post How Jupiter May Have Helped De…

A hidden Antarctic lake may reveal why finding life in alien oceans will be far harder than scientists once hoped.

NASA-supported scientists have provided new information about how the early Earth may have acquired some elements necessary for the planet to become habitable. They also suggest a new role for Jupiter in the distribution of these elements throughout the young solar system. The study, published today in Science Advances, examines this history by looking at […]

Comment Deadline: 11:59 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. Dear Colleagues, The NASA Astrobiology Program and DARES Task Force 2 are pleased to announce the opening of the public comment period for the draft Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (NASA-DARES). The draft report, available in slide form, is available here: NASA-DARES Draft Report […] The post NASA-DARES Draft Str…

Scientists propose that a moon base could act as an isolated first line of biological defense against extraterrestrial samples that might be harmful to Earth's biosphere.

Task Force 1 Selections The NASA Astrobiology Program selected 15 members for Task Force 1 of the 2025 NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (NASA-DARES). Focus Areas Identified by RFI Synthesis These nine major focus areas were identified by Task Force 1 in response to 130 community whitepapers submitted to a Request for Information […] The post NASA DARES Task Force 1 Prod…

The search for any sign of life on Mars continues. In the latest update, a new data release from Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) - essentially the rover’s portable X-ray diffraction lab - and published in a paper in Science, analyzes 20 different rock samples from various elevations of Mount Sharp, the mountain in the center of Gale Crater that Curiosity has been slowly climbing. In…

Dear all, We would like to draw your attention to the NWA Citizen Science Call 2026. This call offers citizen collectives the opportunity to investigate a societal question together with professional researchers within one of the NWA routes, including the route The origins of life – on earth and in the universe. The call is […] The post NWA Citizen Science Call 2026 (Astrobiology, Origin of life,…

New observatories and spacecraft missions are probing environments in our solar system that could potentially host life but have long remained hidden. Icy moons like Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa likely contain oceans beneath frozen outer shells. But a layer of ice prohibits space probes from sampling them directly. Exploring these icy moons is almost forensic: Their surfaces keep a Con…

NASA’s robotic explorers are looking for signs of ancient life on Mars. In its five years and counting on the surface of the Red Planet, the Perseverance rover has collected dozens of rock samples, including tantalizing features that could be signs of past life. Scientists want to keep studying Mars. That’s why NASA plans to send a fleet of next-generation helicopter drones and—one day—astronauts…

Multi-billion dollar space telescope programs aren’t only feats of aerospace engineering. They also feature “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. Or at least statistics. They definitely feature those, as does all good observational astronomy. The problem with statistics is, in order to get a clear definitive answer, you need lots of samples. And, to put it mildly, it’s hard to find lots of samples o…

Applications are open for AbGradCon 2026, taking place September 14–18, 2026, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. AbGradCon welcomes graduate students, early-career postdocs, and recent graduates working in astrobiology and doing related research in adjacent fields (planetary science, astromaterials/chemistry, prebiotic chemistry). APPLY TO ABGRADCON 2026 The application deadline has been ext…

We are closer than ever to detecting signs of life on another world. The James Webb Space Telescope is already ‘sniffing’ alien atmospheres, and the Habitable Worlds Observatory is being built specifically to find biology beyond Earth. But a new paper raises an uncomfortable question; when we do find that first biosignature, will it actually tell us anything meaningful about life in the universe?…

Models suggest that impact-ejected material from Earth could reach Venus’ clouds and potentially survive there briefly. Panspermia is the idea that life, or the ingredients needed for life, can move through space on asteroids, comets, and other objects. If life’s building blocks appear on one planet, a powerful impact could blast material from its surface [...]

A newly identified mineral shoreline in Utopia Planitia reveals how long an ancient Martian ocean may have survived, and why it matters for the search for life.

Experimentally modeling the habitability of extreme ocean world conditions, such as those on Jupiter's moon: Europa, would benefit from integrated microbe-virus model studies to provide both a microbial model and a virus capable of nutrient cycling. This work experimentally probes the microbe/virus combination Saci/STIV as a potential microbial model for habitability studies of Europa's ice-ocean…