The search for life in Solar System bodies such as Mars and Ocean Worlds (eg, Europa and
Enceladus) is an ongoing and high-priority endeavor in space science, even∼ five decades …

The ability to detect and quantify organic molecules at extremely low concentrations makes
the Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) an analytical technique increasingly …

The exploration of our solar system to characterize the molecular organic inventory will
enable the identification of potentially habitable regions and initiate the search for …

Quantifying disequilibria is important to understand whether an environment could be
habitable. It has been proposed that the exoplanet K2-18b has a hydrogen-rich atmosphere …

Icy moons like Enceladus, and perhaps Europa, emit material sourced from their subsurface
oceans into space via plumes of ice grains and gas. Both moons are prime targets for …

Water parcels close to their freezing point contract and become heavy on warming if they are
sufficiently fresh (salinity less than 22g kg− 1 for earth's ocean), but expand and become …

Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a global, subsurface liquid ocean beneath an icy crust
that actively erupts water jets from fissures in its south pole. Data returned from the Cassini …

In 2019, the Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS) project field-tested an
autonomous rover-mounted robotic drill prototype for a 6-Sol life detection mission to Mars …

Spacecraft flybys provide access to the chemical composition of the gaseous envelope of
the planetary object. Typical relative encounter velocities range from km/s to tens of km/s in …

Planetary exploration mission concepts that include flying directly through material for
collection and/or analysis are becoming increasingly common, with Enceladus water ice …