Feature Stories

Using a technique called Raman spectroscopy, researchers are developing instruments that may one day search for life on Mars, Europa, or Callisto.

On Saturday, April 7, NASA's next mission to Mars is set to launch. The 2001 Mars Odyssey will investigate the history of water on the Red Planet.

A chunk of Mars that was hurled to Earth remained cool enough to preserve any microorganisms aboard. So says a group of researchers who have examined martian meteorite ALH84001.

Scientific consensus holds that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars. But now a pair of scientists argue that liquid water in limited amounts and for limited times may indeed be present on Mars' surface.

Scientists have studied the life history of animals, part of a field called development, for many decades. Other scientists have studied how life arose and evolved on Earth.

When NASA's Galileo spacecraft sent back images and data of the Jovian moon Europa, scientists began thinking seriously that life just might exist on this enigmatic, frozen world.

When NASA's Galileo spacecraft sent back images and data of the Jovian moon Europa, scientists began thinking seriously that life just might exist on this enigmatic, frozen world.

DNA is the building block for life on Earth. But it is a highly complex molecule, and could not have arranged itself spontaneously. What did it develop from? Astrobiologists examine possible ancestors of DNA: nucleic acids called PNA, p-RNA, and TNA.

NASA astrobiologist Jack Farmer studies microorganisms.

When they turned the Hubble Space Telescope on a distant globular cluster of stars, astronomers expected to find fifteen or twenty planets. They found zero.