Are we ready to encounter alien life forms in our galaxy? This was a science fiction dream for a very long time. But in the 21st century with rapidly advancing technologies, it's just matter of time. And space.
Some brilliant minds at NASA are looking for a better way to search life on other planets. Effectivity and efficiency are the key factors for searching life on other worlds. And their approach is centered around two things: Nano Satellites and Microfluidics.
At the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop, Planetary Science experts gathered to develop and present ideas about the next 50 years of exploration in our Solar System. NASA Ames Research Center team leader Richard Quinn presented their ideas on the search for life in the next decades.
In our Solar System any other systems we are focusing on "looking for water" approach to find lives. Our first target is obviously Mars. We even sent a Tesla and a Starman there to see if there is any water down there :) Not so funny joke aside, Quinn and his team have two ideas about how to detect life on this "Ocean Worlds" such as Enceladus and Europa and obviously Mars.
First one is Nanosatellites
A nanosatellite is a satellite with a mass between 1-10 kg. Nanosatellite has a couple of advantages over larger and heavier satellites.
- Cheaper production.
- Low cost launch.
- More area coverage with multiple duplicates.
For example: Mars Rovers are doing a great job but they are very limited and they are actually immobile in the scale of a planet. Generalizing conditions of life on other worlds are difficult because we only have samples from just handful of locations.
If there is life on hard to reach locations such as ocean floor on Earth or deep dark caves, we need to scan many locations before we find it. And we can not do that with our rovers. Think about invading Europa's ice oceans with Nanosatellites. We then rapidly accelerate our search for life!.
Microfluidics
Microfluidics is basicaly manipulating small amounts of fluids. Like really small amounts: sub-millimeter scale we are talking about here. The microfluidic idea is, building microchips to handle very small sample sizes and test them in action. NASA worked with microfluidics before to trying to find a way to monitor astronauts health on spacewalks. Microfluidic chips can be built with only having one or two functions at best. And produce one or two results. Simple way to research on key factors.
” Technical constraints will inevitably limit robotic missions that search for evidence of life to a few selected experiments.” – Richard.C.Quinn, et. al.
Microfluidics and nanosatellites are perfect matches if there is a Tinder app for life search endeavor. Adding biomarker diagnostic capabilities to microfluidics and sending them to Europa or Mars with nanosatellites could make a huge impact on searching life in our Solar System.
We are still years away to send some robots or rovers to Europa or Enceladus. But still, we are looking for better ways to find life in our Solar System. Better, cheaper and faster.
But eventually, we will find the best ways to answer our quest and question:
Are we alone?
What do you guys think? Are we going to find other life forms in our Solar System in our lifetimes?
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