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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Shuttle LIFE Organisms Return from Space
In the middle of the night on June 1, 2011, millions of passengers returned safely to Earth as part of the great conclusion to space shuttle Endeavour's last flight, STS-134. Many of those millions of passengers were part of the Planetary Society's Shuttle LIFE experiment. Five different kinds of creatures from all three domains of life are part of Shuttle LIFE.
SETI@home Following Up on Kepler Discoveries
Remember SETI@home? The ground-breaking computing project is now taking a look at candidate Earth-like planets that have been detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope.
Citizen Science projects for Planetary Science: Get Involved! Do Science!
Citizen Science projects let volunteers easily contribute to active science programs. They're useful when there is so much data it overwhelms computing algorithms (if they exist) or the scientific research team attempting to process it.
Why haven't we found evidence for life starting in asteroids?
Here's a theoretical paper that asks an interesting question: When the solar system was very young and still very hot, could medium-sized asteroids have been habitable abodes for life?
Phobos LIFE gets a ride on Endeavour as Shuttle LIFE!
The Planetary Society is contributing this thing called the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) to Russia's Phobos sample return mission -- it's basically a sealed puck with dormant microbes inside that'll fly to Mars and back in the return capsule, and biologists will take a look to see what damage the little bugs suffered during their space journey.
Best "Arsenic and Odd Life" coverage
Last night I asked via Twitter for recommendations for articles that did the best job explaining the significance of the work, by people who actually read the relevant paper in Science.
Arsenic and Deep Space?
If you or I ingest arsenic, well...it doesn't go so well. If you are, on the other hand, a certain species of bacterium from Mono Lake, California, ingesting this seemingly toxic metal is simple enough.
Update from the Ozma@50 Workshop
Frank Drake used the 85' radio telescope at Green Bank to conduct the first modern Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in 1960. Using a very simple receiver and no computers, he listened to each of two sunlike stars for 100 seconds. Call that unit 1 Ozma.
More from the Ozma@50 Workshop
Today's sessions at the Ozma@50 conference stretched the mind as these multidisciplinary gatherings usually do.
Report from SETI workshop marking 50 years since Project Ozma
Jon Lomberg repots from NRAO--the National Radio Astronomy Observatory-- in Greenbank, West Virginia on a SETI workshop marking the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma.
Jaded by Mars Organics
So, you may have heard the news making the rounds last week that a new analysis of the Viking data suggests there may actually be organics and (dare I even say it?) life on Mars! Yawn. Consider me underwhelmed.
New Pulsar Discovery Shows Power of Citizen Scientists and Planetary Society Members
Planetary Society members have reason to celebrate today, with the on-line publication in Science of the discovery of a new pulsar by three citizen-scientists working with Einstein@home, a descendant of the SETI@home project.
Optical SETI's Growing Capabilities
Often, the phrase “next steps” has been known to describe things that don't actually happen. But for The Planetary Society's All-sky Optical SETI, it's different. Here's what's happened in the last year.
Phobos Grunt including Phobos LIFE Delayed Until 2011
Today, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, decided to delay from 2009 to 2011 the launch of the Phobos Grunt mission to study and return samples from the Martian moon Phobos.
Astropulse: A Fresh Look at the Skies in Search of E.T.
If you were a member of an alien civilization trying to communicate across the immeasurable distances of space, how would you go about it?
Dunes in the Outback Red Center
Jani talks about the importance of understanding analogs we can easily visit on Earth to processes happening across the solar system.
SERENDIP Takes a Great Leap Forward
Just when SETI@home is celebrating its 10th anniversary, its older brother, Project SERENDIP, is getting a general makeover.
Quake Catcher Network: SETI@home Spinoff Tracks Earth-Shakers
One of the youngest off-springs of SETI@home has been getting a great deal of attention recently. Known as the Quake-Catcher Network (QCN), this distributed computing project makes use of thousands of volunteers' computers to locate and track earthquakes.