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The image shows the AbSciCon 2026 logo on a light purple background. The logo shows a dairy cow with a space helmet on floating over a moon made of cheese. An Earth-like planet is to the left, a Mars-like planet bottom left, and a purple gas giant right.Against a black background, ELI5 is printed in large blue outline text to the top right. Below is Osiris REx mission in purple to left of the mission badge. Hannah Kaplan stands to the left with the NASA meatball logo.Colorful image of ball-like consortium of cells. The balls look like yellow, pink, and green balls of twine.
AbSciCon 2026 Session and Town Hall Proposals now OpenAbSciCon will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, on May 17-22, 2026.01/03
Explain It Like I'm Five: Episode 1The OSIRIS-REx Mission: Our First Asteroid Sample Return!02/03
NASA Research Examines the Multicellular Behavior of Unique BacteriaA study on multicellular magnetotactic bacteria.03/03
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The image shows a cartoon drawing of an astronaut leaping off the moon in the foreground bottom left toward Mars in the background center. To the left it says Small Steps. At the bottom in larger bold text it reads Giant Leaps.
Small Steps, Giant Leaps: Episode 162: 6,000 Exoplanets and Counting (NASA)Sept. 23, 2025
The 'X-mas Planets' is a collage of computer generated images of potentially habitable worlds created by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) over a section of an image of the De Mairan’s Nebula (Messier 43) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA’s Tally of Planets Outside Our Solar System Reaches 6,000 (NASA)Sept. 17, 2025
Perseverance is positioned to the right of the frame next to Cheyava Falls. The dusty, rocky, reddish surface of Mars fills the rest of the frame with hills in the background. There is a slight fish-eye bend around the edges of the frame.
NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year (NASA)Sept. 10, 2025
Two streaks of grey/green rock run diagonally through the frame from top right to bottom left. One dark piece in toward the top right is labeled Olivine. In the reddish regolith between the two streaks, a seconds spot is labeled Leopard Spot.
What Would It Take to Say We Found Life? We Asked a NASA Expert: Episode 63 (NASA)Sept. 10, 2025
To the left, a had wearing a sterile glove holds a small rectangular sensor against a blue background. The sensor has a red/brown edge. Inside of that is a gold section that runs along all sides, and the middle is mostly black. To the right is a close-up.
Advancing Single-Photon Sensing Image Sensors to Enable the Search for Life Beyond Earth (NASA)Sept. 2, 2025
This is a mosaic image of asteroid Bennu, from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The discovery of sugars in meteorites supports the hypothesis that chemical reactions in asteroids – the parent bodies of many meteorites – can make some of life’s ingredients.
NASA’s Bennu Samples Reveal Complex Origins, Dramatic Transformation (NASA)Aug. 22, 2025
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Illustration of the Perseverance rover arriving on Mars.
NASA MISSIONSMars 2020

NASA's Mars 2020 mission is the next step in NASA's long-term robotic exploration of Mars. The rover Perseverance will provide important data relevant to astrobiology research, along with a vast amount of geological information about the landing site and the planet at large that will help put the astrobiological data into context.

Perseverance will not be looking for organisms living on Mars today. However, the rover will collect data that could be used to identify biosignatures of ancient microbial life.

What really sets this mission apart is that Perseverance will be collecting a suite of samples to be returned to Earth via a Mars Sample Return mission. The opportunity to bring back samples from another planet will allow our researchers to interrogate them with all of the sophistication and thoroughness that Earth-based instrumentation provides.

Learn more