Related papers: Identifying the Potential Biosphere of Mars
The ever-expanding catalog of detected super-Earths calls for theoretical studies of their properties in the case of a substantial water layer. This work considers such water planets with a range of masses and water mass fractions (2 to 5…
Habitability is a measure of an environment's potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planet's success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex…
An origin of Earth life on Mars would resolve significant inconsistencies between the inferred history of life and Earth's geologic history. Life as we know it utilizes amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids for the metabolic,…
From an astrobiological point of view, special attention has been paid to the probability of habitable planets in extrasolar systems. The purpose of this study is to constrain a possible range of the mass of a terrestrial planet that can…
Cold super-Earths which retain their primordial, H-He dominated atmosphere could have surfaces that are warm enough to host liquid water. This would be due to the collision induced absorption (CIA) of infra-red light by hydrogen, which…
Liquid water oceans are at the center of our search for life on exoplanets because water is a strict requirement for life as we know it. However, oceans are dynamic habitats---and some oceans may be better hosts for life than others. In…
Based on a pressure-temperature (P-T) phase diagram model of the Earth, Jones & Lineweaver (2010) described uninhabited terrestrial liquid water. Our model represents the atmosphere, surface, oceans and interior of the Earth - allowing the…
Water has been stored in the Martian mantle since its formation, primarily in nominally anhydrous minerals. The short-lived early hydrosphere and intermittently flowing water on the Martian surface may have been supplied and replenished by…
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets and the emergence of telescopes capable of exoplanet atmospheric characterization have intensified the search for habitable worlds. Due to selection biases, many exoplanets under study are planets…
Lithium is overabundant in cosmic rays because protons impact on carbon and oxygen nuclei and fission them. Among the products of this fission is lithium. Given this preference for carbon and oxygen atoms, in this work I propose that in an…
The presence of valleys on ancient terrains of Mars suggest that liquid water flowed on the martian surface 3.8 billion years ago or before. The above-freezing temperatures required to explain valley formation could have been transient, in…
Airborne dust plays an active role in determining the thermal structure and chemical composition of the present-day atmosphere of Mars and possibly the planet's climate evolution over time through radiative--convective and cloud…
Performing orbital insertion around Mars using aerocapture instead of a propulsive orbit insertion manoeuvre allows to save resources and/or increase the payload mass fraction. Aerocapture has never been employed to date because of the high…
The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has monitored the Martian environment in Gale crater since landing in 2012. This study reports the record of optical depth derived from visible and near-infrared images of the Sun. Aerosol optical…
Water ice is thought to be trapped in large permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) in the Moon's polar regions, due to their extremely low temperatures. Here, we show that many unmapped cold traps exist on small spatial scales, substantially…
A long-standing issue in astrobiology is whether planets orbiting the most abundant type of stars, M-dwarfs, can support liquid water and eventually life. A new study shows that subglacial melting may provide an answer, significantly…
We report on observations made of the ~36km diameter crater, Louth, in the north polar region of Mars (at 70{\deg}N, 103.2{\deg}E). High-resolution imagery from the instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has been…
Mars is the Solar System's canonical small, rocky planet that transitioned from early geologic activity and surface liquid water to a cold and arid planet with a thin, cold, CO$_2$-dominated atmosphere. The evolution of Mars, in the context…
The aim of my dissertation is to investigate habitability in extra-Solar Systems. Most of the time, only planets are considered as possible places where extraterrestrial life can emerge and evolve, however, their moons could be inhabited,…
The habitable zone (HZ) is commonly defined as the range of distances from a host star within which liquid water, a key requirement for life, may exist on a planet's surface. Substantially more CO2 than present in Earth's modern atmosphere…