Extraterrestrial

Jezero crater on Mars was chosen as the landing site for the Perseverance rover because satellite images suggested it was once an ancient lake. More direct evidence has now been found, as photos snapped by the rover reveal signs of flash flooding.

In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, most of our attention has been focused on Earth-like worlds. But now, astronomers have defined a new class of exoplanet called “Hycean” worlds that could be a promising place to find signs of life.

NASA is planning to send a rotorcraft to Saturn's moon Titan, one of the most intriguing places in the solar system. Now the science goals and objectives for the Dragonfly mission have been outlined, with the search for life high on the list.

Controversial physicist Avi Loeb is on the hunt for aliens again. His new Galileo Project aims to track unexplained oddities in the sky, study interstellar objects, and even examine the "possibility" of alien satellites watching us from orbit.

Something is making methane on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. A new study has found that methane levels detected from the icy moon are far higher than can be explained by known geochemical processes – but they are consistent with microbes.

Double star systems may be hiding masses of potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in their combined glare. Roughly half of all stars are thought to exist in binary systems, in which two massive stellar bodies orbit around a common centre of mass.

New modeling of water activity on different solar system planets has found that Venus would be too dry for even the most extreme forms of life – but there may be other contenders in our solar system that we hadn’t considered.

Not all planets orbit stars - some drift freely through the cosmos on their own. These cold, dark worlds don’t make great candidates for hosting life, but a new study suggests that their moons could be more habitable than they might seem.

One of the main goals of NASA’s Perseverance rover is to scour the surface of Mars for signs of ancient microbial life. But a new study of the geochemistry of the Red Planet suggests that life could still be thriving below its surface today.

A new study has found that in about a billion years’ time, Earth will rapidly lose most of its atmospheric oxygen, returning to how it was billions of years ago. This may have important implications in the search for life on other planets.

Jupiter’s moon Europa is a fascinating world, with a global subsurface ocean encased in an icy shell and plumes of water that vent into space. A new study has simulated how these plumes might originate, revealing a surprisingly dynamic ice ball.

A new study has identified 1,004 stars from which aliens could detect signs of life in Earth’s atmosphere by watching as our planet passes across the disk of the Sun. The study could help provide targets for groups searching for alien civilizations.