The search for alien life

Life on Earth relies exclusively on the complex coordination among DNA, RNA, proteins, and an encompassing cell membrane. This level of complexity has been amenable to new molecular techniques with extreme specificity and sensitivity, enabling spectacular advances in cell biology and microbial ecology. Armed with molecular techniques, the last few decades of research have revealed the surprising extent of life on our own planet, expanding the habitable range of salinity, pressure, temperature, and radiation of our world. Given the relatively recent discoveries about life on Earth, how then can we expect to look for alien life that may use completely different sets of molecules for structure and activity? Astrobiology has taken on the challenge of developing the intellectual basis, target identification, instrument capabilities, and operational procedures for the search for life elsewhere. The research aims to develop general principles of how life maintains itself, how life interacts with its environment, and how the signatures of life may be preserved and recognized. The approach has been to move from the laboratory, to the environment, to robotic exploration of planetary analogs. To date, generic evidence for life can be perceived through life's creation and utilization of disequilibria, multiple uses of a relatively few sets of molecules, a preference for chiral compounds, and a predilection for lighter isotopes. It is through application of life detection instrumentation in environmental extremes that we hope to develop a catalogue of generic biosignatures, robust instrumentation capable of revealing the unexpected, and effective exploration strategies for robotic platforms in the search for signs of life. In 2009, Mars Science Laboratory and ExoMars may be the first beneficiaries of this approach.