Habitable Zones & Global Climate
Water Vapor and Clouds on the Habitable-Zone Sub-Neptune Exoplanet K2-18b 
Results from the Kepler mission indicate that the occurrence rate of small planets (<3 R⊕) in the habitable zone of nearby low-mass stars may be as high as 80%. Despite this abundance, probing the conditions and atmospheric properties on any habitable-zone planet is extremely difficult and has remained elusive to date.
Mars
Martian Meteorite's Organic Materials Origin Not Biological, Formed By Geochemical Interactions Between Water And Rock
Organic molecules found in a meteorite that hurtled to Earth from Mars were synthesized during interactions between water and rocks that occurred on the Red Planet about 4 billion years ago, according to new analysis led by Carnegie's Andrew Steele and published by Science.
Panspermia
On The Force Of Vertical Winds In The Upper Atmosphere - Consequences For Small Biological Particles
For many decades vertical winds have been observed at high altitudes of the Earth's atmosphere, in the mesosphere and thermosphere layers.
Venus
Life Could Be Thriving In The Clouds Of Venus
Is there life on Venus? For more than a century, scientists have pondered this question. Now, there is renewed interest in Venus as a place that could support living organisms.
Extinction events
Low Oceanic Oxygen And Sulfide Played A Greater Role In The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction
Florida State University researchers have new insight into the complicated puzzle of environmental conditions that characterized the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME), which killed about 85% of the species in the ocean.
Origin & Evolution of Life
How Simple Liquids Like Water Can Perform Complex Calculations
After many decades of astonishing developments, advances in semiconductor-based computing are beginning to slow as transistors reach their physical limits in size and speed.
Fossils
Identification Of One Of The First Multicellular Algae Thanks To Its Chlorophyll Fossilized For One Billion Years
Researchers from the Early Life Traces & Evolution Laboratory (Astrobiology / Faculty of Science) at the University of Liège have discovered the first in-situ evidence of chlorophyll remnants in a billion-year-old multicellular algal microfossil preserved in shales from the Congo Basin.
Extrasolar Planets
ExoVista: A Suite of Planetary System Models for Exoplanet Studies
Studies of future space- and ground-based exoplanet surveys often rely on models of planetary systems to simulate instrument response, estimate scientific yields, perform trade analyses, and study efficient observation strategies.
Extrasolar Planets
Unsupervised Machine Learning for Exploratory Data Analysis of Exoplanet Transmission Spectra
Transit spectroscopy is a powerful tool to decode the chemical composition of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. In this paper we focus on unsupervised techniques for analyzing spectral data from transiting exoplanets.
TRAPPIST-1
An Energy Balance Model for Rapidly and Synchronously Rotating Terrestrial Planets
This paper describes the Habitable Energy balance model for eXoplaneT ObseRvations (HEXTOR), which is a model for calculating latitudinal temperature profiles on Earth and other rapidly rotating planets.
Astrochemistry
First Images Of Phosphorus Molecules Towards A Proto-Solar Analog
The chemistry of phosphorus in star- and planet-forming regions is poorly understood, despite the central role of phosphorus in terrestrial biochemistry.
More top stories from January.
Recent Releases
Recent Status Reports
Calendar
- 18 Jan: NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee
- 19 Jan: NASA Smdh NASA Living With a Star (LWS) Annual Town Hall Meeting
- 20 Jan: NASA Webinar Jan. 20: Dissecting the SBIR/STTR 2022 Solicitations
- 26 Jan: SMD Virtual Townhall Meeting on SPD-41 Scientific Information policy for the Science Mission Directorate
- * Submit Your Event | More Events *
Masthead
Tip your editors
tips@spaceref.com