Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
All
All
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Could Europa Clipper find life?
For a mission that doesn’t aim to find alien life, Europa Clipper may come surprisingly close.
Connecting ancient life to other worlds
Looking to the past to guide the search for life.
Earthlings as aliens
Looking at life on Earth from another perspective.
Extraterrestrial artifacts
Could the Solar System host traces of other intelligent life?
Why the “habitable zone” doesn’t always mean habitable
The habitable zone is a useful concept in astrobiology, but it can sometimes paint an over-simplified picture of planetary habitability.
Mars may host oceans’ worth of water deep underground
The tentative discovery hints at an habitat where life could potentially thrive.
Eureka? Scientists’ first hints of life on other planets may not be so obvious
Knowing that you've found signs of life beyond Earth may not be as clear-cut and simple as one might think.
NASA discovers Mars rock with ancient potential for life
A single 3.5 billion-year-old rock shows signs of all the conditions life needs to thrive.
Your impact: June solstice 2024
Growing space salads and advocating for exploration
The best places to search for life in our Solar System
From Earth's neighboring planets to distant moons, these are the best places to look for alien life.
How astronomers search for life on exoplanets
Technologies for studying planets around other stars are advancing all the time. Along with those advancements come new ways to look for possible signs of life on those planets.
How do humans try to communicate with aliens?
SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, using various techniques to look for signals from advanced alien civilizations. METI (messaging extraterrestrial intelligence) is when we send out our own signals for aliens to find.
Cometary sights and sounds
Discover what causes a comet’s color and what it might be like to listen to one whiz by.
Are exoplanet 'terminator zones' a lead in the search for life?
Exoplanets with terminator zones are unusual worlds that may challenge our traditional understanding of habitability.
Life on Venus: Your Questions Answered
Is there life on Venus? Was our planetary neighbor ever inhabited? Here are the answers to your most pressing questions about the possibility of alien life on Venus.
The scientific truth is out there
The real science of aliens, the policy implications of ET, and new views of worlds beyond our own.
Are aliens real?
An exploration of whether aliens are out there, what kind of extraterrestrial life is most likely to exist, and how we're looking for it.
Asteroids worth getting psyched about
New discoveries from Ryugu, material heading our way from Bennu, and anticipation for a mission to Psyche.
What the search for aliens can learn from life on Earth
When searching for extraterrestrial life, we have to base our hunt on what we know about life on our own planet. This may seem limiting, but there's a lot we can learn from the astonishingly diverse lifeforms we have here on Earth.
Weaving together a picture of the Cosmos
When we combine data sources, collaborate with each other, and invite artistic perspectives, we can better understand the Universe we live in.