NfoLD Webinars

NfoLD Webinar: Mars Sample Return

Speakers:

Dr. Louise Jandura - NASA JPL: Perseverance's Sampling and Caching System - How Does it Work?

Dr. Sandra Siljestrom - Sweden's Research Institute RISE: Monitoring Potential Contamination During Sampling by the Perseverance Rover

NfoLD Think Tank: Mars 2020 Science Results

Speakers:

Dr. Roger Wiens - Purdue University - Data Returned by SuperCam

Dr. Maria-Paz Zorzano - Centro de Astrobiologia University - Data Returned by Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA)

NfoLD Webinar Series: Mars Sample Return Sample Analysis & Selection

​

Speakers: 
Dr. Briony Horgan - Purdue University

PIXL Team - Perseverance Mission

​

NfoLD Think Tank: Raman as a Tool for Life Detection

​

Speakers: 
Dr. Scott Perl - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

Dr. Claire Marshall - University of Kansas

This month we have a special treat as our Early Career Council Leadership Committee is presenting their research! Their expertise covers a broad range throughout the life detection spectrum and it promises to be a fantastic hour of research and discussion. Plus, it's a great opportunity to meet the Early Career Council leaders, and hear about some of the activities available to early career scientists, and how they support our life detection efforts throughout NfoLD.

Speakers:

​

Bonnie Teece - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

​

Taylor Plattner - Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

​

Osama Alian, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, will return to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, with material from asteroid Bennu. When it arrives, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will release the sample capsule for a safe landing in the Utah desert. The pristine material from Bennu – rocks and dust collected from the asteroid’s surface in 2020 – will offer generations of scientists a window into the time when the Sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.

In anticipation of this historic event, Heather Graham and Aaron Burton will be presenting on the significance of OSIRIS REx and its  impact on the community.

Speakers:

Heather Graham - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Aaron Burton - NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

NfoLD Steering Committee member Pablo Sobron reported live from E/V Nautilus on the results of their submersible Raman/Fluorescence system developed with NASA funding to explore Ocean Worlds and search for signs of habitability and life.

NfoLD Think Tank: Science Merits and Technology Readiness of Microscopy Observations at Ocean Worlds

Speakers:

Brent Christner, University of Florida: Microscopy as a tool for life detection

Richard Quinn, NASA Ames: Developing an imaging system for life detection missions

NfoLD Forum: Research and Technology for the Detection of Biosignatures

Speakers:

Fabien Kenig, University of Illinois, Chicago: Lipids as Biosignatures on Ocean Worlds

William Brinckerhoff, Goddard Space Flight Center: Potential application of in situ separation mass spectrometry to astrobiological investigations of ocean worlds

Special Think Tank on Nanopore Technology: Seeking Life's Polymers at Ocean Worlds

Christopher Carr, Georgia Institute of Technology - Biological nanopore, solid state nanopore, and nanogap technologies: their readiness and remaining challenges for Ocean Worlds

Topic: Astrobiology of Ocean Worlds

Laurie Barge, NASA JPL - Defining the Biosignature Threshold for Astrobiology of Ocean Worlds

Peter Willis, NASA JPL - Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor (OWLS)

Topic: The Science and Technology of Orbilander

Nozair Khawaja - Status of Enceladus' Subsurface Organic Material

Shannon MacKenzie - Enceladus Orbilander: A mission concept to search for Signs of Life

Topic: Peptides for Life Detection

Ricardo Arevalo- Detecting peptide biosignatures via laser desorption mass spectrometry (LDMS)

​

Brook Nunn - Revealing metabolisms of psychrophilic bacteria to low nutrient, high salinity, subzero environments to find peptide motifs for life detection

Background videos for the Standards of Evidence Workshop during the summer of 2021. Topics include an analysis of the reporting and science of phosphine detection on Venus, the history of the Viking Lander biology experiments, and an overview of remote sensing and in-situ detection methods.