extraterrestrial life

Mars Curiosity rover finds water in scoop of soil sample

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Earthsky.org - 9/27/13

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite found water in the dust, dirt and fine soil from the Rocknest site on Mars. (This file photo shows trenches Curiosity dug in October 2012.) Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on the surface of Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, charged with answering the question: “Could Mars have once harbored life?” To do that, Curiosity is the first rover on Mars to carry equipment for gathering and processing samples of rock and soil. One of those instruments was employed in the current research: the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which includes a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer. These tools enable SAM to identify a wide range of chemical compounds and determine the ratios of different isotopes of key elements.

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60 Billion Alien Planets Could Support Life, Study Suggests

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Accuweather.com - 7/8/13

Though only about dozen potentially habitable exoplanets have been detected so far, scientists say the universe should be teeming with alien worlds that could support life. The Milky Way alone may host 60 billion such planets around faint red dwarf stars, a new estimate suggests.

 

Based on data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, scientists have predicted that there should be one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf, the most common type of star. But a group of researchers has now doubled that estimate after considering how cloud cover might help an alien planet support life.

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