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Community Corner

JPL Scientist Searches for Life Beyond Earth

JPL scientist stops by Glendora Library to talk to residents on the efforts to identify extraterrestrial life.

How close are we to finding out if extraterrestrial life exists?

On a Saturday afternoon, an astro biologist spoke to a small group of people on some big ideas about the search for life beyond Earth's boundaries.

Dr. Max Coleman, principal scientist and senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, delivered his presentation, "Looking for Life on Mars and Other Places" in the Bidwell Forum at the .

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Coleman talked about the progress made in exploring other worlds with the use of spacecraft over the past decades, such as the Voyager I and Voyager II spacecraft in the '70s and the more recent Spirit and Infinity rovers on Mars. There were several spacecraft slated to launch to Mars within the next few years, but financial woes have kept these missions grounded for the foreseeable future, according to Coleman.

Coleman said that despite the setbacks, the research must continue and the way to do that is by identifying what is known as a biosignature.

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"It is a sign of life, which is not life itself necessarily. We can test these approaches we're developing and the instruments on Earth," Coleman said.

Coleman said that water is one of the most important aspects of the presence of life. Mars is still being studied to find life-harboring water, and the tiny, icy moon Europa, which orbits the planet Jupiter, has a sea of water under the massive layer of ice encompassing the moon.

Mineral biosignatures are easier to identify the presence of life, since microbial artifacts are "harder to look for and look at," Coleman said. "What we need to do is develop new scientific approaches and look for new biosignatures."

Earth has provided some opportunities to observe similar conditions to that of Mars and Europa, Coleman said, with the Atacama Desert in Chile providing dry landscapes similar to Mars, while the Caribbean Ocean around the Grand Cayman Islands served as the setting for the latest scene of exploration for Coleman.

In the future, NASA, in conjunction with the European Space Agency, have the ExoMars Program to launch an orbiter around Mars in 2018 to continue researching for signs of life on the red planet.

Although he said he might have a slight biased selection of an audience, Coleman said people's interest is still strong.

"I've seen it being the same amount and pretty enthusiastic. Since we're working with public money, it is our duty to let everyone know what we're doing and to infuse them with the same feeling we have ourselves and we're very excited about it," Coleman said.

The library will host two more JPL speakers, the next on Saturday, April 21 at 2 p.m. will discuss the Dawn spacecraft. The second program, scheduled in June, has yet to be given a subject.

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