Life elsewhere in the Universe: Astrobiology

PI: Karen Junge

The field of Astrobiology represents a natural step to expand our curiosity about microbial life beyond Earth to extraterrestrial possible habitats for life allowing me to look at my research with a different perspective.  Ice is ubiquitous in the Universe.  If we better understand how microbial life adapts to Earth ice matrices, we will be in a better position to evaluate and plan tests of the habitability of frozen systems elsewhere in the Universe.  In that way, it provides an exciting context for our work: can we find life on other planets? Where will we have the best chances of detecting it? And how can we detect it? Thus, as part of our work in this field we contributed scientific input and images for NASA’s Astrobiology outreach website ‘Astroventure’ designed for 5 to 8 graders ().

Funding source: NSF- OPP grant 0338333