Finding Life and Living in Space
Asgardia’s three top goals are to ensure the peaceful use of space, to protect the Earth from space hazards, and to create a demilitarized and free scientific base of knowledge in space.
When it comes to life in space there are two main goals. One is to find alien life and the other is to bring human life to colonies in space. To accomplish both these goals experts look to both moons and other planets.
For instance, astrobiologists are considering the possibility that life may exist on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft flew past Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth moon, and found hydrogen gas in an erupting plume of water. This eruption suggested that hydrothermal activity could be happening below Enceladus’ icy surface. If that’s the case, this moon would provide two important ingredients for life — water and energy for metabolic processes.
Furthermore, Saturn’s moon Europa’s surface is similarly covered in ice but underneath that surface, scientist think there could be twice as much water as on Earth and if this moon also produced hydrothermal activity within that ocean, it could be a prime candidate for holding life. And, a study using computer models has even suggested that Europa may have hydrogen and oxygen in amounts comparable to Earth, even if the moon is lacking in volcanic activity.
NASA has plans to launch a Europa flyby mission in the early 2020s, and the agency’s SUBSEA project will aim to examine hydrothermal environments in the Lō`ihi seamount, off the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island, in an effort to understand more about how life can survive on Earth in conditions similar to those possible on Enceladus and Europa.
Plus, last week Jupiter officially “gained” 10–12 moons and those long lost moons were of pretty substantial size. So it’s possible new research could find even more possibly habitable satellites.
Another promising avenue for the search for life in space came in 2015 with the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system and its seven Earth-sized planets. Thus, much of our search has been redirected toward M-dwarf systems — and justifiably so. Based on Kepler data, researchers estimate M-dwarfs (the most common type of star) host around 10 billion Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way alone. Although in a system as small as TRAPPIST-1, solar flares are incessant these planets can’t do much to protect themselves, ionospheric profiles suggest that below an altitude of 125 miles (200 kilometres), the planets’ atmospheres are unaffected by stellar winds. The upper layers act as a buffer, leaving the surface largely unscathed.
Plus, if stellar winds do blow away planets’ atmospheres, they can be revived. All it takes is a few hundred volcanoes and geysers ready to explode. These eruptions can spew gases back into the atmosphere and replenish it. However, it has occurred a few times in Earth’s history, but so far we have not seen this take place in the TRAPPIST system.
But, Manasvi Lingam, a postdoctoral student at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics explained that it’s possible that TRAPPIST-1 represents an excellent ‘laboratory’ to test such theories in greater detail with future telescopes.
And, of course, there is always the famous Mars. When it comes to the red planet scientists think that water once covered about 20 percent of the surface before Mars’s atmospheric gases were stripped away, and the water evaporated into space. Scientists have also found meteorites from Mars that held the remnants of organic material — suggesting this planet once contained the ingredients for life.
Plus, Mars has been the center of many science-fiction books and it’s possible that in the future it could be more science than fiction. For example, the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI) recently wrapped up a workshop called Living on Mars, where nearly 60 participants joined forces to come up with eight designs for a home or colony on the planet. Essentially, they envisaged the designs of the future by imagining solutions to the challenges of life on a new, hostile planet.
Several groups came up with the idea of integrating their spaceships into the colony they were building. Once they land on Mars, they don’t have a base to use yet so they’ll use the spaceship as a home base and repurpose it to come up with innovative ways to create a home. This would also maximize the use of resources already there.
Another group created canopies around their spaceship using special textiles that they would then douse with liquid, which would immediately freeze in Mars’ extreme temperatures, resulting in a hard shell. Then they had the idea of covering that shelter with Martian soil to protect it from radiation and the very real danger of space debris.
While another team proposed building inside one of Mars’ countless lava tubes, which are underground caves created by volcanic activity. They form when the edges of lava from a volcanic eruption cool and form a ridge around its flow. The ridge later cools, forms a crust and becomes a tunnel. On Earth, lava tubes have been found in places like Hawaii, Iceland, Australia and Sicily.
Thus, the quest for life in space is promising. If you believe that the future of humankind needs to keep pushing the boundaries of the possible and unite together to conquer the final frontier join Asgardia now and help us realize our vision. To help meet our goals and set up habitable platforms in space Asgardia is open to everyone.
References: https://bit.ly/2JJdbjP, https://bit.ly/2A3SjEj, https://bit.ly/2JMs8RX, and https://bit.ly/2Lslq8K.
Image Credit: e71lena / Shutterstock
Originally published at asgardiaspacenews.com on July 23, 2018.
