ScienceNASA is ready to fund NExSS initiative to hunt for alien life in outer space

NASA is ready to fund NExSS initiative to hunt for alien life in outer space

NASA has strengthened the search for alien life with its new program called Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS). The research team includes Earth climate scientists from its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who will adapt our planet’s climate model to potential Earth-like planets to narrow down their search.

The $10 million to $12 million NExSS project’s work is aided by NASA’s Kepler space telescope which has identified around 1000 planets, out of these 5 planets are Earth-sized and are present in the habitable zone. The GISS group, with nearly 30 years of research on the Earth’s climate, will be able to simulate meteorological models that existed throughout our world’s 4.5 billion history and compare it to extra solar planets with promising Earth-like conditions.

NASA Alien Life

As reported in the Nature journal, Anthony Del Genio, a climate scientist who is the group leader of the GISS team, felt that the hunt for extraterrestrial life will not only be dependent on astronomers, but also on climatologists, chemists and Earth scientists. This is reflected in GISS’s 16-member team which includes researchers from different fields such as solar physicists, astrophysicists and planetary scientists.

Mary Voytek, NASA’s lead organizer of NExSS, said the mix of people from different backgrounds would be interesting and also could also prove tricky as diverse fields look at theories from their own perspective. Communication would prove key to success of such an interdisciplinary initiative. The GISS team is already busy tinkering with a climate model of our planet. They are trying to remodel the system.

This will enable them to identify exoplanets with basic Earth-like 24-hour days and 365-day orbits parameters. The researchers are also working out simulations of the Earth’s earlier past and other ancient water systems that existed on inner solar system planets like Venus and Mars. By creating such simulations, the scientists will be able to sieve through data and pinpoint planetary systems which could possibly support life.

Also see: Alien life expected to be found by 2025, claims NASA scientists

The NExSS project will partly be carried out from the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory which boasts around 55 members from 23 institutions. The group hopes to increase its strength of researchers from every relevant field so that they can effectively sift through the data they will be receiving after the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in 2018.

The climate scientists at GISS are aware that along with simulation models, actual observation of the potential extraterrestrial life supporting planets would be necessary for time feasible realization of NASA’s goal.

Related Articles

Latest Posts