1/2/2024 0 Comments Nasa news alien life![]() ![]() “It is a strong collaborative effort,” Gupta said. The project team comprises researchers with expertise in optics and laser instrument development, as well as geology and astrophysics. Gupta, the Langley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will work with experts at two of NASA’s centers and with Hampton University the University of Maryland, College Park and a private industry partner, Laser and Plasma Technologies of Hampton. If successful testing happens during the initial two-year grant period, the project could acquire additional funding, and the final instrument could be complete within six or seven years, the lab director said. Numerous details will need to be worked out as the scientists move toward proof of concept. It will also be a proving ground, a test in preparation for more challenging environments in the solar system. “They would have to create a balloon-type environment, and for the mineral nutrients, they would have to extract them from the soil and use them the way they need.”īut for MOCAPS, the moon won’t be an end in itself. “If they sent up plants, the plants obviously cannot grow in the cold,” Gupta said. Gupta said understanding past and present conditions – including knowing where life might have flourished and how it might have thrived – will be important in preparing for the future.Īs a practical concern, any future moon colonists would not just need to bring extra stuff, such as a greenhouse for growing food they would need to understand the type of soil they are working with and how its composition changes over time. Research published in the journal Astrobiology in 2018 theorized, however, that conditions favorable to at least simple lifeforms such as bacteria may have existed on the moon during two periods when the Earth’s natural satellite likely did hold an atmosphere – but both were billions of years ago.Īctive microbes potentially could have thrived in pools of water, for example. The moon doesn’t sustain any form of life that doesn’t bring its own adaptive technology, because there’s no atmosphere. “This will also be the first probe to get a microscopic image, which will get you into human-hair type resolution.” Probing the Past and Future “The spectrometry would work at an extreme sensitivity level, one part per billion,” Gupta said. The head of the probe will yield the information using laser spectrometry – relying on how light scatters to identify mineral elements – and an auto-focusing lens that can take ultra-high-resolution photography at the microscopic level. All the information transferred will be electronic and beamed to NASA in real time. ![]() Although the probe will roam, the rover probably won’t pick up physical objects. UVA’s longstanding strength in photonics will be essential.Īn efficient size is important in order to conserve space on the flight, and energy while there. The scientists want to answer a host of questions about the terrain’s overall makeup, including its subsurface, and how it has evolved. He added, though, that’s just scratching the surface. And by scanning, there may be trace evidence of biological life in the form of cells.” “Certain types of chemical composition could tell us if there was life there. “The basic idea of this NASA-funded project is to obtain biological and elemental signatures, as well to detect surface morphology, to determine whether there was any life,” said engineering professor and principal investigator Mool Gupta, in whose laser lab a key portion of the technology will be created. The space program is also contemplating putting humans on Mars. ![]() Instead, the technology could be part of a future mission to the moon – and perhaps beyond. The space agency just awarded the two-year, $900,000 grant to the School of Engineering and Applied Science last week. It won’t be done in time for this first unmanned launch, of course. The new collaborative research will take the form of a roving, ground-level probe. ![]() slated to blast off soon to orbit the moon – its first trip there in 50 years – the University of Virginia and NASA’s Artemis space missions seek to answer big questions like these, while pushing the scope of what can be analyzed on alien soils. Was there ever life on the moon? What about on other planets? ![]()
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