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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
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NASA NTRS2018

A Planet for Goldilocks: The Search for Evidence of Life Beyond Earth

A Planet for Goldilocks: The Search for Evidence of Life Beyond Earth "Not too hot, not too cold" begins the prescription for a world that's just right for life as we know it. Finding evidence of life beyond Earth is one of the primary goals of science agencies around the world thanks in large part to NASA's Kepler Mission which launched in 2009 with the objective of finding Goldilocks planets orbiting other stars like our Sun. Indeed, the space telescope opened our eyes to the terrestrial-sized planets that populate the galaxy as well as exotic worlds unlike anything that exists in the solar system. The mission ignited the search for life beyond earth via remote detection of atmospheric biosignatures on exoplanets. Most recently, our collective imagination was awakened by the discovery of Goldilocks worlds orbiting some of the nearest neighbors to the Sun, turning abstractions into destinations. Dr. Batalha will give an overview of the science legacy of the Kepler Mission and other key discoveries. She'll give a preview of what's to come by highlighting the missions soon to launch and those that are concepts taking shape on the drawing board.

Batalha, Natalie M.↗
NASA NTRS2018

A Rapid, Low-Cost Approach to Permanently Extend Life Beyond Earth

This presentation covers the value proposition and challenges of permanently extending life beyond Earth. It proposes that this can be most expeditiously accomplished by starting with a population of small Closed Ecological Systems (CES)s, each with several specie populations that enable each CES to persist indefinitely without the need to add resources, remove wastes, or require human intervention. Each CES is instrumented and controlled so that it can be remotely maintained, experiments performed, and data collected. Data from the entire population of CESs are managed in a cloud server database for analyses on how to improve the performance of each CES as well as formulate new CESs. The presentation discusses a modular, artificial-spacecraft prototype that could be used to fly CES modules in space under various gravity and radiation conditions to study changes in the CESs relative to their counterparts that remain on Earth as the control group. The presentation concludes with the next, low-cost steps for rapidly executing the approach described.

Dorais, Gregory A.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Life Beyond Earth: Past, Present and Future

The key to life anywhere, including off planet, will be focusing in an ecological approach, both understanding the relationship of the organisms to their environment, and to each other. This includes the fundamental questions of astrobiology: “Where do we come from?”, “Where are we going?” and “Are we alone?” For over a decade NASA has used synthetic biology, which is in simplest form, is creating new capabilities with life, as an enabling technology to answer these questions. Examples will be given for the search for life elsewhere, and notably, the use of synthetic biology as an enabler of human exploration. We have a current satellite mission that combines synthetic biology and the first steps towards enabling a human colony off planet using an ecological approach.

Rothschild, Lynn J.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Life Beyond Earth: Past, Present and Future

The key to life anywhere, including off planet, will be focusing in an ecological approach, both understanding the relationship of the organisms to their environment, and to each other. This includes the fundamental questions of astrobiology: “Where do we come from?”, “Where are we going?” and “Are we alone?” For over a decade NASA has used synthetic biology, which is in simplest form, is creating new capabilities with life, as an enabling technology to answer these questions. Examples will be given for the search for life elsewhere, and notably, the use of synthetic biology as an enabler of human exploration. We have a current satellite mission that combines synthetic biology and the first steps towards enabling a human colony off planet using an ecological approach.

Lynn J Rothschild↗
NASA NTRS2003

Records of our Early Biosphere Illuminate our Origins and Guide our Search for Life Beyond Earth

A scientific "mission of exploration to early Earth" will help us chart the distribution of life elsewhere. We must discriminate between attributes of biospheres that are universal versus those attributes that represent principally the outcomes of long-term survival specifically on Earth. In addition to the basic physics and chemistry of matter, the geologic evolution of rocky habitable planets and their climates might be similar elsewhere in the Universe. Certain key agents that drive long-term environmental change (e.g., stellar evolution, impacts, geothermal heat flow, tectonics, etc.) can help us to reconstruct ancient climates and to compare their evolution among populations of Earth- like planets. Early Earth was tectonically more active than today and therefore it exhaled reduced chemical species into the more oxidized surface environment at greater rates. This tectonic activity thus sustained oxidation-reduction reactions that provided the basis for the development of biochemical pathways that harvest chemical energy ("bioenergetics"). Most examples of bioenergetics today that extract energy by reacting oxidized and reduced chemicals in the environment were likely more pervasive among our microbial ancestors than are the presently known examples of photosynthesis. The geologic rock record indicates that, as early as 3.5 billion years ago (3.5 Ga), microbial biofilms were widespread within the coastal environments of small continents and tectonically unstable volcanic islands. Non oxygen-producing (non-oxygenic) photosynthesis preceded oxygenic photosynthesis, but all types of photosynthesis contributed substantially to the long-term increase in global primary biological productivity. Evidence of photosynthesis is tentative by 3.5 Ga and compelling by 2.7 Ga. Evidence of oxygenic photosynthesis is strong by 2.7 Ga and compelling by 2.3 Ga. These successive innovations transformed life from local communities that survived principally by catalyzing chemical equilibration to a globally dominant agent that created and sustained widespread chemical disequilibria in the environment and shallow crust. Major biogeochemical perturbations ca. 2.3 to 2.0 Ga, 1.3 Ga, and also 0.8 to 0.6 Ga, contributed to the irreversible oxidation of the global environment and perhaps also triggered evolutionary innovations (e.g., the development of multi-cellular biota) that became the foundations of our modern biosphere. Understanding the nature and timing of this ascent of life is crucial for discerning our o m beginnings. This understanding also empowers OUT search for the origins, evolution and distribution of life elsewhere in our solar system and beyond.

DesMarais, David J.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Life beyond earth and the mind of man

A symposium is reported on the implications of the possibility of extraterrestrial life for social, philosophical, and humanistic impacts. The viewpoints from astronomers, biologists, physicists, anthropologists, and theologians are given. Costs involved for finding this life are discussed along with the possible benefits to society. The direct implications from radio telescopes, the Pioneer 10 plaque, and discussions between the panelists are also reported.

Berendzen, R.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Early Earth and Rocky Extrasolar Planet Characterization

Scientists are currently designing instruments, telescopes, and spacecraft to search for evidence of life beyond Earth. This search for life beyond Earth comes with an expectation to detect life that is different than the life found on modern-day Earth. But scientists will also be expected to provide compelling proof behind any claims that we are not alone. These two expectations are seemingly at odds with each other, because it will be easiest to provide compelling evidence for life when we have a deep understanding of the life we are looking at.The study of Earth history provides a means to reconcile this tension. Different periods of Earth history present us with biospheres that are dramatically different from modern-day Earth, but for which we have abundant data. This informs our understanding of habitability, because of the variety of global chemical and climatic conditions in Earth history for which we know life has thrived. The study of Earth history also informs our understanding of how to detect life; as the global influences of life have completely changed, so have the detectable features of Earth's biosphere.The appreciation of our home planet as a tightly coupled system also provides us top-level lessons for how to search for an even broader set of biospheres with a wider variety of detectable features. The study of Earth history has taught us that life is a both a function of and critical forcing on the planetary environment. Numerical models of these interactions can by driven by our understanding of Earth history, and be validated against the geological and geochemical data. These models can then be applied to a wider variety of planetary conditions. This will help scientists determine what kinds of life are possible, and eventually help them recognize and confirm the presence of life on rocky planets around other stars.

Domagal-Goldman, Shawn D.↗
NASA NTRS2016

The Astrobiology Primer v2.0

Astrobiology is the science that seeks to understand the story of life in our universe. Astrobiology includes investigation of the conditions that are necessary for life to emerge and flourish, the origin of life, the ways that life has evolved and adapted to the wide range of environmental conditions here on Earth, the search for life beyond Earth, the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and consideration of the future of life here on Earth and elsewhere. It therefore requires knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, and many more specialized scientific areas including astronomy, geology, planetary science, microbiology, atmospheric science, and oceanography. However, astrobiology is more than just a collection of different disciplines. In seeking to understand the full story of life in the Universe in a holistic way, astrobiology asks questions that transcend all these individual scientific subjects. Astrobiological research potentially has much broader consequences than simply scientific discovery, as it includes questions that have been of great interest to human beings for millennia (e.g., are we alone?) and raises issues that could affect the way the human race views and conducts itself as a species (e.g., what are our ethical responsibilities to any life discovered beyond Earth?).

Domagal-Goldman, Shawn D.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Astrobiology as a NASA Grand Challenge

"Are we alone" is a question whose ambition can only be met with a NASA-led global collaboration. In this white paper, we describe how this makes "The Search for Life Beyond Earth" a new Grand Challenge for NASA. As described in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the White House National Economic Council, Grand Challenges are "ambitious but achievable goals that harness science, technology, and innovation to solve important national or global problems and that have the potential to capture the public's imagination." NASA had identified an "Asteroid Grand Challenge" centered on the Asteroid Retrieval Mission, which was closed out in June, 2017. Here, we explain how NASA's next Grand Challenge could be focused on "The Search for Life Beyond Earth," with a flagship-scale mission in Astrophysics as its centerpiece.

Domagal-Goldman, Shawn↗
NASA NTRS2011

Biological Technologies for Life Beyond Low Earth Orbit (BT4LBLEO): Study Introductions and Synopsis

The study will address the following mission concerns: -Extended human presence in the environments of deep space as well as the Moon and Mars will require a solid biological understanding of the integrated effects of diminished gravity, enhanced radiation, and transit- and destination-specific variables from the sub-cellular to the whole organism level. -Biological and associated technologies for biological and robotic precursor missions to realize future objectives for space colonization. -Surfaces, gravity levels, radiation environments, and atmospheres of these nearest neighbors are radically different in chemical and geological make-up from those on our home planet, and all of these contributory effects must be considered.

Hines, John W.↗