NASA is constantly searching for any signs of life in the solar system. Earth is currently the only planet that is capable of holding life as we know it, as the distance between it and the sun is perfect for life to proliferate. On the other side, it doesn’t mean there isn’t life on other planets or moons. The space agency has been studying not only the Red Planet but also the natural satellites around Jupiter, such as Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Now, they are turning their focus to somewhere else to see if there’s something vital for life.
The search for life outside Earth continues
Finding life in our galaxy could be like searching for a needle in the ocean – it can be anywhere, but we just don’t have that much time or resources to try to find it actively. This led space agencies to another search: water. Water is one of the basic elements for life to proliferate, and so far, NASA hasn’t had any luck on Mars, the closest planet to Earth with similar characteristics to our planet. On the other side, on Europa, great evidence was found.
The moon of Jupiter is considered an icy world due to the ice’s ability to flow in the crater walls, which are made of ice, and eventually will soften and flow back onto the surface. This could lead the craters on the moon to become more shallow or disappear. On the other hand, there’s a new planet NASA is looking into that might leave these two behind for a while.
NASA is looking for life in other cosmic structures
The outer shell of the dwarf planet Ceres, which stretches roughly 588 miles (946 km) across, may be made from a kind of dirty, frozen ocean. That’s what new computer simulations are suggesting. Ceres has long shown signs of being rich in ice. Its surface is dotted with pits, domes, and landslides — features that hint at ice lurking just beneath the dusty top layer. Its gravity measurements also point to a composition closer to ice mixed with dust and rock, rather than solid rock alone.
For a while, many researchers weren’t convinced. Even after NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbited Ceres between 2015 and 2018 and gave us a closer look, skepticism remained about just how icy this dwarf planet was. To test this, a team led by Ian Pamerleau, a Ph.D. student at Purdue University, worked with his supervisor, Mike Sori, and Jennifer Scully from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The team created computer models that simulated how craters evolve over billions of years, based on different mixtures of ice, dust, and rock.
Ceres is made out of ice, dust, and rocks
They came to the conclusion that when the crust was made of roughly 90% ice combined with dust and rock, the craters remained sharply defined despite the low gravity, suggesting that ice-rich material could maintain its shape across Ceres’ long lifetime.
NASA researchers now think that when Ceres was younger and warmer, it held a shallow ocean just under its icy surface. Even as the surface cooled down, heat from radioactive elements deep inside may have kept that ocean liquid for longer than expected, making it a fascinating target for future exploration.
According to Sori, what excites him is that Ceres might be one of the easiest places in the solar system for studying a once-liquid ocean. All of this has led the team to consider Ceres as one of the most accessible icy worlds in the solar system — and potentially one of the best spots to explore for clues about the history of water beyond Earth.