Workshop Overview:
The current framework for life detection for Mars exploration uses the ancient
biosignatures paradigm where robust organics and former lacustrine environments
provide assessments of habitability. This framework does not provide the science
community with direct evidence of extant life potentially inhabiting these regions.
With the recent Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey emphasizing a focus
on extant life searches, it is critical to
revisit and update our scientific investigations and datasets to more definitively interpret
potential extant biology outside of our terrestrial biosphere.
From their fieldwork and laboratory experiences this team will develop and
showcase geobiological, geochemical, isotopic, spectroscopic, and spatial measurements
of cellular life. Using these measurements, the study will develop a new framework for biological validation for future missions with
science driving the instrument development.
Team Leads
-
University of Edinburgh
-
California Institute of Technology
-
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
The study program schedule is available in .pdf here
- Kathryn Bywaters — Honeybee Robotics
- Aaron Celestian — Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
- Pin Chen — JPL
- Charles Cockell — University of Edinburgh
- Frank Corsetti- University of Southern California
- Evan Eshelman — Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Early Career
- Woody Fischer — Caltech (Team Lead)
- Christine Foreman — Montana State University
- Kevin Freedman — University of California, Riverside
- Madeline Garner — Montana State University
- Lisa Guan — JPL
- Martin Homann — University College London
- Yadira Ibarra — San Francisco State University
- Suniti Karunatillake — Louisiana State University
- Karen Lloyd — University of Tennessee
- Kennda Lynch — Universities Space Research Association
- Mike Malaska — JPL
- Jill Mikucki University of Tennessee
- Ashley Murphy — Planetary Science Institute
- Devan Nisson — Princeton
- Scott Perl — JPL
- Sunanda Sharma — JPL
- Pablo Sobron — Impossible Sensing
- Sanjoy Som — Blue Marble Space Institute of Science
- Mary Beth Wilhelm — NASA Ames Research Center
- Madelyne Willis — Montana State University
- Laurence Wilson — University of York
