Studying the Climate History of Mars – a new Habitable Worlds grant to BMSIS Scientist Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra

Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science was recently awarded a grant by the NASA Habitable Worlds program to study the climate history of early Mars. This project will draw upon recent geologic discoveries from the ongoing exploration of Mars to understand how Mars was once able to sustain an unfrozen ocean. Dr. Haqq-Misra will collaborate with Dr. Michael Way of NASA GISS in this project, which uses computational models of the Martian climate to calculate […]

October 6, 2019

Announcing the Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON)

Our friends at the European Astrobiology Institute have announced the first Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON)! The conference will take place on La Palma Island, in the Canaries, Spain, from 20 through 24 April 2020. Registration, abstract submission, and accommodation booking are now open for this meeting. It will take place at La Palma & Teneguia Princess Hotel on La Palma Island. The scientific sessions are currently planned to cover the following themes: Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems and Detection […]

October 1, 2019

Dinosaurs in The Delta Quadrant?

Star Trek: Voyager, Science, and Catholicism Guest post by Rebecca Salcedo, one of our current Young Scientist Program (YSP) participants. Rebecca has an undergraduate degree in molecular environmental biology from UC Berkeley and is currently a Masters student in microbiology at San Francisco State University. She’s a current BMSIS YSP at NASA Ames where she’s working with Dr. Alfonso Davila and Dr. Paul Wilburn on a project considering how life could develop and thrive on Mars by studying microbes from the […]

September 14, 2019

Astronomy and Space School in Mardin

Guest post by Berfin Dağ, one of our current Young Scientist Program (YSP) participants. This summer, Berfin put together and ran a workshop to teach astronomy in her hometown of Mardin, Turkey. Among their activities were lectures on astronomical topics, a hands-on activity to create a star atlas, and public observing nights. I was very excited to teach astronomy this summer in Mardin, the city where I was born and raised, in the heart of Mesopotamia. This idea has been […]

August 26, 2019

RED’ 2019 Astrobiology School Experience

Guest post by Sneha Shirsat, one of our past Young Scientist Program (YSP) participants. This past summer, Sneha took part in the 2019 class of Rencontres Exobiolgiques pour Doctorants (RED’ 2019) at the Réserve Ornithologique du Teich in France! The program offers a weeklong course of training in astrobiology, through lectures, projects, and hands-on training. After a long hiatus from my astrobiology rendezvous in 2015 as part of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science Young Scientist Program, I ventured […]

August 7, 2019

Exploring the Development of Primordial Compartments in the Origin of Life

(Note: the following text was adapted from a recent press-release from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Tokyo, Japan. Both Tony Jia and Jim Cleaves are BMSIS Scientists and researchers at ELSI. The original text of the press release can be found here and the peer-reviewed research article can be found here, as well as through the reference below) “Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or […]

July 30, 2019

Chemistry and biology are not separate worlds

BMSIS Scientist Omer Markovitch builds models to predict chemical speciation. (Following is an interview with Dr. Markovitch, translated from the NEMO Kennislink website) Before there was life on earth, molecules already displayed behaviour that resembles life, such as reproduction and evolution. Omer Markovitch tries to understand and predict that behaviour using computer models. How did life originate on earth? “That is far too big a question to investigate all at once,” says Omer Markovitch, a post-doctoral researcher at the University […]

May 6, 2019

Yuri’s Night in Marilia, Brazil

BMSIS Scientist Dr. Ivan Paulino-Lima recently organized the very first Yuri’s Night event in his home town of Marilia, Brazil! Yuri’s Night is a global celebration of humanity’s past, present, and future in space. It’s a world space party, bringing together space-themed events of many kinds from around the globe and bringing together people to share in a passion for space exploration and understanding our place in the cosmos. The events are held every April in commemoration of when Yuri […]

April 1, 2019

BMSIS Monthly: The Detectability of Future Earth

BMSIS Monthly – March 2019 Every month, the scientists of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science meet to discuss their research, work in science communication, upcoming conferences and events, and more. The Meeting for March 2019 included a conversation about the recent issue of the journal Futures that focused on the detectability of our future Earth. Our monthly meeting for March of 2019 included a conversation about the works recently published in a special edition of the journal Futures that […]

February 25, 2019

Synthetic Hydrothermal Vents at NASA JPL

Scientists have reproduced in the lab how the ingredients for life could have formed deep in the ocean 4 billion years ago. The results of the new study offer clues to how life started on Earth and where else in the cosmos we might find it. Astrobiologist Laurie Barge [a Scientist with BMSIS] and her team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are working to recognize life on other planets by studying the origins of life here on […]

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