Europa seen in true colour (left) and false colour (right).
NASA
Only about 12kg of oxygen is produced per second on Europa, which is on the lower side of previous estimates from about 5kg to 1,100 kg per second.
Earth and Moon as seen by the Galileo spacecraft from a distance of 6 million km away.
NASA
Control experiments are critical in informing the search for alien life.
Ice particles, with just a trace of phosphates, venting from near Enceladus’s south pole, as imaged by Cassini in 2010.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Five out of the six essential elements required for life on Earth were known to exist on Enceladus. Now the sixth and final one has been found too.
Groundwater is used for irrigation and drinking water, but those wells are rarely more than one kilometre deep. A huge volume of salty water exists as much as 10 kilometres below the Earth’s surface.
(Shutterstock)
Groundwater is the second-largest store of water on Earth. Governments and industry use groundwater reservoirs to store waste, but it may also have environmental functions that haven’t been revealed.
Mushroom-like structures on Mars.
Nasa
No conclusive evidence that extraterrestrial life exists has been found…yet.
Are microbes travelling around in the galaxy?
Nuttawut Uttamaharad
A new study argues we should search for microbial life rather than human-like aliens.
Shutterstock
Scientists are starting to use genetic information from bacteria to measure the health of vast areas of the ocean.
China’s Tianwen-1 blasts off.
STR/EPA
If China succeeds, it will be the first country ever to visit and land on Mars on its first try.
Apies river downstream of the informal settlement and the village of Hammanskraal.
Author supplied
Water at informal settlements, where sanitation and waste management facilities were absent, had high bacteria levels.
Composite image of Venus from data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists don’t claim to have evidence of life on Venus but they have ruled out pretty much everything else.
In a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., engineers observed the first driving test for the Mars rover, Perseverance. Perseverance will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars’ climate and geology, and collect samples for a future return to Earth.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
This summer, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is taking the next giant leap in our search for signs of life beyond Earth.
Artist’s impression of the Mars 2020 rover.
NASA
Collecting samples from Mars and brining them back to Earth will be a hugely complicated task, but it may be our best bet of finding alien life.
Enigmatic Europa.
NASA
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission just got the green light - here’s what it could achieve.
Varied terrain on Europa.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Whether anything could live in Europa’s subsurface ocean depends on what kind of salt it contains. Now scientists have found out.
Methane detected at Mars’ Gale Crater (the centre picture).
Kevin Gill/Flickr
For the first time, an instrument orbiting Mars and a rover on the surface have detected methane simultaneously – raising hopes for finding life on the red planet.
A live Padaungiella lageniformis wiggles its pseudopods.
Daniel J. G. Lahr
Using the family relationships between single-celled protists alive today, researchers hypothesized what their evolutionary ancestors looked like – and then looked in the fossil record for matches.
Mars seen by the Viking orbiter.
NASA/JPL/USGS
There’s enough dissolved oxygen in the salty lake below Mars’ surface to support simple lifeforms such as sponges. Here’s what that means for space exploration.
The south polar cap of Mars is hiding a subsurface lake, according to new research.
NASA/JPL/MSSS
Studies from our own planet shed light on whether there could be life in a subglacial lake on Mars.
Blast off.
Sergey Nivens
Nearly 50 years since the first man walked on the moon, our morals are still stranded on Earth.