NASA creates NExSS for life search
EarthSky
Nexus: a series of connections, a central point. That is what NASA hopes to create via a new initiative – called NExSS (NASA Exoplanet System Science) – that brings together teams of scientists from various institutions and disciplines. The collaboration will be looking for indicators of alien life – signs of living microbes, or something even more intriguing – on distant planets. NASA calls the new coalition a virtual institute and emphasizes it will use a systems science approach – that is, a big-picture approach that cuts across many different scientific disciplines – to work toward an answer to what is perhaps our world’s most intriguing question: are we alone? NASA announced the new collaboration this week (April 21, 2015).
NASA says that NExSS will tap into the collective expertise from each of the science communities supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate:
• Earth scientists will develop a systems science approach by studying our home planet.
• Planetary scientists will apply systems science to a wide variety of worlds within our solar system.
• Heliophysicists will look in detail at how the sun interacts with orbiting planets.
• Astrophysicists will provide data on the exoplanets and host stars.
The announcement, by the way, comes in the same week that astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile said they’ve now acquired the first direct visible light spectrum from an exoplanet. This technique will someday be used to find biosignatures – signs of life – on these distant worlds. Read more about that research here.
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