NASA: What is This New Life-Detection Instrument?

Source: NASA/JPL–Caltech

This new instrument is ready to fly to Europa or Enceladus.

But for what exactly is this instrument?

NASA scientists are trying to find new locations where life could exist. So far, it is Saturn’s moon En, celadus, and Jupiter’s moon Europa. Both have hidden oceans of liquid water with undoubtedly habitable conditions, but reaching those oceans through the thick ice will be difficult.

The Cassini mission from Enceladus discovered plumes of water on Saturn. Also, the Humble Space Telescope has found interesting evidence of plumes emerging from Europa.

Read down below for more answers about this new instrument.

Details about NASA’s New Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor (OWLS) Device

This new NASA device known as Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor (OWLS) can collect water samples while flying through the plumes, searching for any microorganisms that the geysers may have spurted into space.OWSL is a compound of eight experiments capable of investigating whether life exists in the collected samples.

Are the other planets habitable?

Lukas Mandrake asked himself this question, and he released a statement:

That requires instruments that take a lot of data, and that’s what OWLS and its science autonomy are set up to accomplish.

Lukas Mandrake is the OWLS’ instrument autonomy system engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Check out the device below:

Source: NASA/JPL–Caltech

The Importance of the Extant Life Volumetric Imaging System (ELVIS)

ELVIS is one of the eight instruments from OWSL, which is a group of several microscopes. A Digital Holographic Microscope (DHM) is among the ELVIS’ microscope arsenal. This microscope can record video of water samples at a microscopic scale and then convert the video into three-dimensional, holographic imagery.

Various missions were proposed to return to Saturn’s Enceladus in the future. Scientists have submitted to NASA a mission idea called Orbilander, which would operate as a lander and an orbiter on Enceladus. Also, it could be revived a concept called the Enceladus Life Finder that NASA turned down.

Bianca Raicu

Bianca is passionate about sports, music, technology, and everything entertainment! She's an avid reader, an animal lover (especially dogs), and a firm supporter of the environment. The Weeknd is her favorite artist, so you might soon see plenty of articles about him!