Lifeboat Foundation

As space missions delve deeper into the outer solar system, the need for more compact, resource-conserving and accurate analytical tools has become increasingly critical—especially as the hunt for extraterrestrial life and habitable planets or moons continues.

A University of Maryland–led team developed a new instrument specifically tailored to the needs of NASA space missions. Their mini laser-sourced analyzer is significantly smaller and more resource efficient than its predecessors—all without compromising the quality of its ability to analyze planetary material samples and potential biological activity onsite. The team’s paper on this new device was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on January 16, 2023.

Weighing only about 17 pounds, the instrument is a physically scaled-down combination of two important tools for detecting signs of life and identifying compositions of materials: a pulsed ultraviolet laser that removes small amounts of material from a planetary sample and an Orbitrap analyzer that delivers high-resolution data about the chemistry of the examined materials.

The world’s second-most powerful rocket—though it’s largest partially renewable rocket—yesterday blasted-off on a secret mission for the US Space Force amid spectacular views. Only the fifth flight of the company’s heavy-life Falcon Heavy rocket (though the second inside a few months), the event took place in twilight Sunday, with a satellite being successfully sent into geosynchronous Earth orbit (meaning it will orbit at the same speed as Earth rotates). Two side-boosters then returned to land in tandem on launch pads.

They were the 163th and 164th successful landings of an orbital-class rocket, according to SpaceX.

Continue reading “Watch The Spectacular SpaceX Rocket Launch As Boosters Return To Earth In Tandem” »

There could be or could have been life in the subsurface of Io (the “Pizza Moon”) — an overlooked target for astrobiology.

Posted at BigThink, direct link at:

Posted on Big Think.

Continue reading “Io, an Overlooked Target for Astrobiology” »

Does anyone believe extraterrestrials have visited Earth? I am super curious to see what the members of this group believe!

A habitable zone is an area just the right distance from a star so water can exist on a planet’s surface and the conditions are neither too hot nor too cold for life.

Continue reading “NASA has discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star” »

Scientists believe they’ve discovered a cache of gemstones on the surface of Mars.

No, we’re not talking about diamonds — according to a study published last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets by a team of Arizona State University and NASA-affiliated researchers, the Red Planet’s Gale Crater is teeming with opals.

Let’s get it out of the way: bling iced out with precious gems from another planet sounds like the coldest flex in the solar system. But there’s also scientific significance to the finding, which suggests that the area held vast reserves of water far more recently than we previously thought. That means the discovery could also force us to rewrite theories of ancient life on Mars.

Avi Loeb joins John Michael Godier to discuss his new initiative the Copernicus Space Corporation. ‘Copernicus’ is a privately held, novel type of space exploration company, headquartered in Massachusetts, which fosters ultra-long-range thinking and leverages disruptive technology for new human strategies in space. Avi also discusses the Galileo Project and its scientific search for UAP. Also discussed, can we detect gravity wave signals from alien civilizations?

Avi Loeb links:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home.
https://copernicus-initiative.com/

Continue reading “Why the Universe May Be Full of Aliens Featuring Dr. Avi Loeb” »

A discussion of the most unsettling solutions to the fermi paradox.
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2:33 Beginning.

Continue reading “The Most Unsettling Solutions to the Fermi Paradox With Stephen Webb” »

Can We Stop the Sun from Destroying Earth?
Isaac Arthur returns to Event Horizon for his annual discussion with John Michael Godier about everything from alien machine civilizations, saving earth from the suns eventual expansion, and the future of humans in this universe.

Isaac Arthur links:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g.
https://twitter.com/Isaac_A_Arthur.

Continue reading “Alien Machine Civilizations, The End of Earth, and Our Future with Isaac Arthur” »

Scientists at the recently opened SETI Post-Detection Hub at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have a daunting task ahead of them: figure out what…