Talk by Marc Neveu

Robotic missions to the far reaches of our solar system have revealed exotic worlds, changing our sense of place in our cosmic neighborhood. The Cassini mission explored Saturn and its rings and moons between 2004 and 2017. In mesmerizing displays of light and shadow, Cassini revealed worlds being created and pulled apart, the smoggy moon Titan with its polar seas of methane, and a tiny but mighty moon –Enceladus– from which emanate jets of ice and vapor from a water ocean hidden inside.

Enceladus beckons as a possible harbor for microbial life unrelated to Earth. Marc Neveu is helping to design the next robotic mission either to detect life on Enceladus or to understand why it is not found. This is work not just on computers and not just in the lab, but also at remote locations in Iceland and Antarctica that hold answers to how signs of life may be modified in their journey from deep oceans to space. He will share stories and vistas of this undertaking to understand how common life may be in the universe.

Bio: Marc Neveu is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. His research aims to measure the potential of icy worlds to harbor and express signs of microbial life, in order to inform the design of robotic space missions searching for life beyond Earth.