Extraterrestrial Life

The agency's controversial Asteroid Redirect Mission no longer calls for redirecting an asteroid into high lunar orbit

It's been a long time coming, but this week NASA's Mars Opportunity rover completed the first-ever Martian marathon. After landing on the Red Planet in January 2004 on a mission originally planned to only last 90 days, Opportunity has instead endured for more than a decade, and has taken eleven years and two months to [...]

A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spotted a surprising amount of methane erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggesting it harbors more methane than we thought. Clara Moskowitz reports

Scientists are finding liquid water, the cornerstone for life as we know it, in surprising nooks and crannies of the solar system. Following Wednesday's news that there seem to be hydrothermal vents churning away in the warm, alkaline seas inside Saturn's moon Enceladus, researchers announced airtight evidence yesterday that Jupiter's moon Ganymede also has a [...]

Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Triton, Pluto, Eris…they may all have, or have had, large oceans of liquid water trapped beneath a frozen crust.

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus has a surprisingly warm inner world

Shortly after 7:30 am Eastern time this morning, a seven-year space voyage at last reached its final destination: NASA's Dawn mission entered orbit around Ceres, a small, icy world orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.

Saturn's moon Titan is too cold for cell membranes to form as they do on Earth. But researchers have come up with a cell membrane that could exist on Titan. Christopher Intagliata reports

Computer simulations reveal that a compound found on Saturn’s largest moon may be able to form a freeze-resistant, flexible membrane that could encapsulate cells or organelles

Picture a hot volcanic spring. Mineral-laden acidic water flows through sulfur-rich rocks. A foul odor hangs in the air. For us it’s a nasty environment, best enjoyed through the lens of a tourist’s camera.

New evidence points to the evolution of the ability for bacteria to grab nitrogen from the atmosphere some 3.2 billion years ago, about 1.2 billion years earlier than thought—with implications for finding extraterrestrial life. Lee Billings reports