Venus Express searching for life - on Earth

[n2doc]

Friday, October 10 2008
Scientists using ESA's Venus Express are trying to observe whether Earth is habitable. Silly, you might think, when we know that Earth is richly stocked with life. In fact, far from being a pointless exercise, Venus Express is paving the way for an exciting new era in astronomy.
Venus Express took its first image of Earth with its Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) soon after its launch in November 2005. About a year after the spacecraft established itself in Venus's orbit, David Grinspoon, a Venus Express Interdisciplinary Scientist from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Colorado, suggested a programme of sustained Earth observation.

"When the Earth is in a good position, we observe it two or three times per month," says Giuseppe Piccioni, Venus Express VIRTIS Co-Principal Investigator, at IASF-INAF, Rome, Italy. The instrument has now amassed approximately 40 images of Earth over the last two years.

The images of Earth cover both visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum and can be split into spectra, in order to search for the signature of molecules in the Earth's atmosphere.

The value of the images lies in the fact that Earth spans less than a pixel in Venus Express's cameras. In other words, it appears as a single dot with no visible surface details. This situation is something that astronomers expect to soon face in their quest for Earth-sized worlds around other stars.

"We want to know what can we discern about the Earth's habitability based on such observations. Whatever we learn about Earth, we can then apply to the study of other worlds," says Grinspoon.
http://spacespin.org/article.php/81024-venus-express-life-earth

This image composite shows the signatures of methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3) and nitrous oxide (N2O), minor species of the Earth's atmosphere but powerful greenhouse gases, detected by the Visual and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board ESA's Venus Express at infrared wavelengths, while the spacecraft was pointing Earth along its orbit around Venus. Our planet was just a pixel in VIRTIS's field of view.

[hobbit709]

1. The real question: Is there INTELLIGENT life on Earth.

[trotsky]

2. Smart thinking.

This is cool.

[Ganja Ninja]

3. Very cool!

[pokerfan]

4. Darn it

I just came here to post that!