A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket transporting the TESS satellite lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Wednesday, April 18, 2018. The space telescope will survey almost the entire sky, staring at the brightest, closest stars in an effort to find any planets that might be …
Diamonds and Science: The Deep Earth, Deep Time, and Extraterrestrial Crystal Rain
We all know that cut diamonds sparkle and shine, one of the great aesthetic creations from nature. Less well known is that diamonds and the bits of minerals, gases and water encased in them offer a unique opportunity to probe the deepest regions of our planet. Thought to be some of the oldest available materials …
The Just-Approved European ARIEL Mission Will Be First Dedicated to Probing Exoplanet Atmospheres
The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved the ARIEL space mission—the world's first dedicated exoplanet atmosphere sniffer— to fly in 2028. ARIEL stands for the “Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-Survey mission.” It is a space telescope that can detect which atoms and molecules are present in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The mission was …
A Reprieve for Space Science?
A quick update on a recent column about whether our "golden age" of space science and discovery was in peril because of cost overruns and Trump administration budget priorities that emphasized human space travel over science. The 2018 omnibus spending bill that was passed Wednesday night by the House of Representatives and Thursday night …
Space Science In Peril
NASA's decades-long success at enabling ground-breaking discoveries about our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, our origins and the billions of other planets out there is one of the crown jewels of our nation's collective inventiveness and will, and surely of our global soft power. Others have of course made major contributions as well. But …
The Northern Lights, the Magnetic Field and Life
May I please invite you to join me in the presence of one of the great natural phenomena and spectacles of our world. Not only is it enthralling to witness and scientifically crucial, but it’s quite emotionally moving as well. Why? Because what’s before me is a physical manifestation of one of the primary, but …
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False Positives, False Negatives; The World of Distant Biosignatures Attracts and Confounds
What observations, or groups of observations, would tell exoplanet scientists that life might be present on a particular distant planet? The most often discussed biosignature is oxygen, the product of life on Earth. But while oxygen remains central to the search for biosignatures afar, there are some serious problems with relying on that molecule. It …
Putting Together a Community Strategy To Search for Extraterrestrial Life
I regret that the formatting of this column was askew earlier; I hope it didn't make reading too difficult. But now those problems are fixed. Behind the front page space science discoveries that tell us about the intricacies and wonders of our world are generally years of technical and intellectual development, years of planning and …
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Two Tempting Reprise Missions: Explore Titan or Bring Back a Piece of A Comet
Unmanned missions to planets and moons and asteroids in our solar system have been some of NASA's most successful efforts in recent years, with completed or on-going ventures to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, the asteroid Bennu, our moon, Pluto, Mercury and bodies around them all. On deck are a funded mission to Europa, another to Mars …
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A New Way to Find Signals of Habitable Exoplanets?
The search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is extremely difficult and time-consuming work. The telescopes that can potentially take the measurements required are few and more will come only slowly. And for the current and next generation of observatories, staring at a single exoplanet long enough to get a measurement of the …
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Many Worlds 