If there is life out there, can we detect it?

Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin publish two experimental studies in journal Astrobiology. No 101/2020 from Jun 16, 2020 Instruments on-board future space missions are capable of detecting amino acids, fatty acids, and peptides, and even identify ongoing biological processes on ocean moons in our Solar System. These are the exciting conclusions reached from two studies by an international team led by scientists of the Planetary Sciences research group at Freie Universität Berlin. The two studies were funded by the European Research Council under Consolidator grant 724908-Habitat OASIS and published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Astrobiology. Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, is known to emit plumes of gas and ice grains formed from the moon's subsurface ocean, located beneath an ice crust, into space. A similar phenomenon is suspected to occur on Jupiter's moon Europa. The compositions of ice grains emitted from such water worlds can be sampled by spacecraft intercepting the particles, using so-called impact ionization mass spectrometers (Figure 1).