Astrobiology Magazine

NASA has beefed up a process of traffic monitoring, communication and maneuver planning to ensure that Mars orbiters do not approach each other too closely.

A robotic mission’s search for life on Mars may seem worlds away from human scientists wandering around hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. But a study of the Yellowstone hot springs has revealed new clues about how organic materials might get preserved in similar environments on the Red Planet, bettering our chances of finding possible…

Researchers have reproduced a wide array of building blocks for life in a prebiotic scenario involving meteorites and the solar wind. They began with formamide, a simple organic compound that’s ubiquitous in the universe. Formamide has been detected in galactic centers, star-forming regions, interstellar space, as well as comets and satellites.

In order to weed out Venus-like planets from those that would be more habitable, several scientists, including planetary scientist Stephen Kane of San Francisco State University, proposed the establishment of a “Venus zone” around stars, a region where the atmosphere could be consumed by a runaway greenhouse effect that superheats its planets.

A new study reveals that viruses lend a surprisingly helpful hand to microbes eking out a living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. When they infect the vent’s resident bacteria and archaea, the viruses mix and match the single-celled creatures’ genes. As a result, the microbes can benefit from possessing a wide range of genes in a…

Research led by a University of New Hampshire professor has identified a new source of methane for gas hydrates — ice-like substances found in sediment that trap methane within the crystal structure of frozen water — in the Arctic Ocean. The findings, published online now in the May 2015 journal Geology, point to a previously undiscovered,…

A new paper reveals that Europa’s atmosphere is 100 times less abundant than claims in previous publications, and composed mainly of atomic rather than molecular oxygen.

An asteroid smashing into a planet can dramatically alter the planet’s habitability by setting back evolution or even encouraging biodiversity. In order to understand how cosmic impacts influence life and the environment, scientists study the craters left behind. Some of these impact craters come in pairs, most likely caused by binary asteroids. A binary asteroid…

NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, cytosine, and thymine, three key components of our hereditary material, in the laboratory.  They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine exposed to ultraviolet radiation under space-like conditions produces these essential ingredients of life. – See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/topic/origins/origin-and-evolution-of-life/nasa-ames-reproduces-building-blocks-life-laboratory/#sthash.7JIfVL47.dpuf