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.
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
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.
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