NASA Grants $ 7 Million to Detect New Lives

NASA has awarded nearly $ 7 million to a new interdisciplinary project to detect a new Earth-like non-terrestrial life on Mars, Jupiter and Saturn's icy moons. The laboratory of agnostic biosignatures (LAB) will prepare the ground to characterize the potential biosignatures, or signs of life, announced Sunday a release.

LAB's initial research focuses on four aspects of life that do not involve specific biochemistry. They will use these concepts to create a framework for searching for life "as we do not know it."

These features include: models of chemical complexity, surface complexity, chemical imbalance with the surrounding environment and evidence of energy transfer.

These indicators of life were chosen because they can be designed so as not to bias the observations according to the specific forms of life on Earth and are methods that can be implemented during flight missions, the statement said.

The LAB is a consortium of 15 members of teams from universities and institutions around the world: scientists in the sciences of the planet, biologists, chemists, computer scientists, mathematicians and experienced instrumentation scientists.

"Our goal is to go beyond what we currently understand and find ways to find life forms that we can hardly imagine," said Principal Researcher Sarah Stewart Johnson of the University. Georgetown, in a statement.

The team of investigators will lay the groundwork for the characterization of potential biosignatures that do not presuppose a particular molecular framework, as well as design tools for their detection and interpretation strategies.

"Detecting life agnostically means not using the unique features of life on Earth," said Heather Graham at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"We are working to transform how biosignatures, or signs of life, are measured inside and outside our solar system," Graham said.