The hunt for extraterrestrial life is one of NASA's main objectives.
NASA has yet to discover any convincing evidence of alien life, but it has long been investigating the solar system and beyond to help us answer basic issues such as whether we are alone in the cosmos.
The astrobiology program of the agency studies the origins, development, and dispersion of life beyond Earth.
NASA's scientific missions are working together to discover unambiguous evidence of life beyond Earth, from investigating water on Mars to exploring potential "oceans worlds" like Titan and Europa, to searching for biosignatures in the atmospheres of our cosmic neighborhood and planets beyond our solar system.
Is there a chance that life exists anywhere else than Earth?
There is a chance, if not a certainty, that life exists somewhere other than Earth. Science is motivated by a desire to learn more about the unknown - yet science is ultimately based on evidence, and alien life has yet to be discovered. We will, however, continue our search.
Do intelligent extraterrestrials exist?
There is no known evidence for sentient life elsewhere, intelligent or otherwise, based on study at the SETI Institute, examination of Martian meteorites, new discoveries of methane inside the Mars atmosphere, and other similar investigations.
The hunt for life in the cosmos, on the other hand, is one of NASA's main objectives.
NASA is in charge of the US government's hunt for alien life, whether it's here on Earth, on the planets and moons of our solar system, or farther out in space.
How does NASA go about looking for life?
The hunt for life at NASA is complex. The research approach for NASA's astrobiology program focuses on three fundamental questions:
- What is the origin of life and how does it progress?
- Is there life somewhere else in the universe?
- What methods do we use to look for life in the universe?
- Astrobiologists have discovered a plethora of hints to these major issues during the last 50 years. In addition to utilizing missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Hubble Space Telescope to look for habitable exoplanets, NASA's hunt for life involves using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Hubble Space Telescope.
- Missions such as the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will look for biosignatures in the atmospheres of other planets - finding oxygen and carbon dioxide in other planets' atmospheres, for example, may indicate that an exoplanet supports plants and animals in the same way as ours does.
Is NASA on the lookout for technosignatures?
Technosignatures are a kind of biosignature that is defined as any observable indication of living or dead organisms.
- Technosignatures are technological indicators that may be used to infer the presence of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, such as narrow-band radio transmissions or pulsed laser searches for alien intelligence.
The terms SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and technosignatures are often used interchangeably.
- NASA funds technosignatures research, but not ground-based radio-telescope searches, owing to NASA's policy of supporting astrophysical research using space-based assets.
- NASA also sponsored a Topical Workshops, Symposia, and Conference to create a research agenda to prioritize and direct future theoretical and observational investigations of non-radio technosignatures, as well as to produce a publishable report that can be used to start creating a technosignatures library.
Given that a planet may support life for billions of years before intelligent life evolves to create technology that can be detected from other solar systems – our own planet, for example, has only been creating detectable technosignatures for a little over a century – we have a much better chance of finding life if we look for other biosignatures instead of just technosignatures.
Is NASA looking for or studying UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena)?
NASA does not go out of its way to look for UAPs. NASA, on the other hand, gathers significant data about Earth's atmosphere via our Earth-observing satellites, frequently in cooperation with other international space organizations.
- While these data are not intentionally gathered to detect UAPs or extraterrestrial technosignatures, they are publicly accessible and anybody may scan the atmosphere with them.
- While NASA does not actively look for UAPs, if they are discovered, it will offer up new scientific topics to investigate.
- Scientists from the atmosphere, aerospace, and other fields may all contribute to a better understanding of the phenomena.
Exploring the unknown in space is fundamental to our identity.
Courtesy: NASA.gov
~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan
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