Assistant Professor Tom Painter has recently been awarded a 5-year grant from NASA entitled ‘Astrobiology of Icy Worlds: Habitability, Survivability, and Detectability ’, along with scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions. 

Icy worlds such as Titan, Europa, Enceladus, and others may harbor the greatest volume of habitable space in the Solar System. For at least five of these worlds, considerable evidence exists to support the conclusion that oceans or seas may lie beneath the icy surfaces and that life may well thrive in such cold, lightless oceans beneath many kilometers of ice.  This study will investigate what processes may sustain life in these systems and deliver that life to the surface where it can be seen from an orbiter, the ability of life forms to survive icy world surface conditions, and the detectability of these life forms from spectroscopic techniques.  Ultimately, this project prepares a path to flight for instrumentation that will visit one or more of the icy worlds to rigorously search for life off of Earth in our solar system.