Nasa claims we’ll find aliens very soon – and now the agency is revving up its efforts to track them down.
NASA has now put together a team of ‘extraterrestrial experts’ or as they have become known, “alien hunters” to see if any of the planets discovered outside our solar system are habitable and contain any form of life.
THE NEXSS TEAM OF ‘ALIEN HUNTERS’
The NASA alien hunters and a team of ‘experts’ from the University of Berkeley, California and Stanford are tasked with answering the question:
‘What are the properties of exoplanetary systems, as they relate to their formation, evolution, and potential to harbour life?’
They will combine astronomical observations of exoplanets and forming planetary systems with powerful computer simulations and cutting-edge microscopic studies of meteorites.
The team from Arizona State University in Phoenix will take a similar approach. This research group will place planetary habitability in a chemical context, with the goal of producing a ‘periodic table of planets.’
Researchers from Hampton University, Virginia, will be exploring the sources and sinks for volatiles on habitable worlds. This research will help determine the past and present habitability of Mars and even Venus.
The team centered at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies will investigate habitability on a more local scale. It will examine the habitability of solar system rocky planets through time.
The team from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, will design new spectrometers – optical instruments that measure the spectrum of light – with the stability to reach Earth-detecting precision for nearby stars.
A group led the University of Nebraska-Kearney will explore the existence and evolution of exospheres around exoplanets, the outer, ‘unbound’ portion of a planet’s atmosphere.
From the University of California, Santa Cruz, a group will investigate how novel maths equations can be used to extract information from light that is emitted and reflected by planetary atmospheres.
in other words…..they are damn serious about finding life
Operation Ganymede
NASA and SETI Astronomers are said to have detect an artificial radio signal originating from Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s largest moons. The signal is supposed to have been discovered during the 1980’s. Since the late 80’s NASA has shown a more than curious interest in Jupiter’s moon.
Operation Europa
NASA has not kept secret it’s belief that Europa could host alien life deep below its frozen surface. The space agency is planning a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022, to find out!
Meanwhile, the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will launch in 2018 to scope out the atmospheres of nearby ‘super-Earth’ alien planets.