NASA's Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) Division of the Science Mission Directorate will soon solicit applications for a highly motivated individual to provide scientific leadership in pioneering scientific discovery and enabling exploration in its Space Biology program, which focuses on the development of research to understand the effects of the spaceflight environment on biological systems ..read more

Space may look empty, but it contains extreme temperatures, high levels of background radiation, micrometeoroids, and the unfiltered glare of the Sun ..read more

In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on Earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, simple cells lacking a nucleus and other detailed internal structure dominated the planet ..read more

Scientists at Newcastle University have uncovered a source of oxygen that may have influenced the evolution of life before the advent of photosynthesis ..read more

Straight-chain (normal-propyl cyanide, n - C3H7CN) and branched-chain (iso-propyl cyanide, i - C3H7CN) alkyl cyanides are recently identified in the massive star-forming regions (Sgr B2(N) and Orion ..read more

Does life exist outside our Solar System? A first step towards searching for life outside our Solar System is detecting life on Earth by using remote sensing applications ..read more

The Doppler shift of a radio signal is caused by the relative motion between the transmitter and receiver. The change in frequency of the signal over time is called drift rate ..read more

Interstellar chemistry is important for galaxy formation, as it determines the rate at which gas can cool, and enables us to make predictions for observable spectroscopic lines from ions and molecules ..read more

As a major approach to looking for life beyond the Earth, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is committed to detecting technosignatures such as engineered radio signals that are indicative of technologically capable life ..read more

Recent investigations have demonstrated the potential for utilizing a new observational and data analysis technique for studying the atmospheres of non-transiting exoplanets with combined light that relies on acquiring simultaneous, broad-wavelength spectra and resolving planetary infrared emission from the stellar spectrum through simultaneous fitting of the stellar and planetary spectral signatures ..read more