The Search for Evidence of Life Beyond Earth

Is there life beyond Earth? This is one of humanity’s most profound and existential questions. The discovery of another inhabited world would be a society-shaping event that would forever change our perspective of life and the universe. Decades of robotic exploration have revealed an unexpected diversity of alien worlds that could potentially sustain life. Within our solar system, the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus has the highest biological potential, and robotic missions are currently being designed to search for evidence of life in that ocean world. This public lecture will discuss the scientific and technical challenges and strategies to search for signatures of life at Enceladus, and the possible implications of a positive result.

Speaker: Dr. Alfonso Davila, NASA Ames