Fabian Klenner is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at the University of Washington (UW). His research focus lies on the exploration of icy moons in the Solar System, in particular Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa.
is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at the University of Washington . His research focus lies on the exploration of icy moons in the solar system, in particular Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa.. Enceladus, only 313 miles in diameter, harbors a liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust that spans the entire moon.on the spacecraft. This instrument measured the emitted ice grains individually and told researchers about the composition of the subsurface ocean.
We found these instruments would do a good job identifying cellular material. Instruments designed to analyze single ice grains should be able to identify bacterial cells, even if there is only 0.01% of the constituents of a single cell in an ice grain from an Enceladus-like geyser. With these space agencies' near-future plans and the results of our study, the prospects of upcoming space missions visiting Enceladus or Europa are incredibly exciting. We now know that with current and future instrumentation, scientists should be able to find out whether there is life on any of these moons.
Before accepting his current position at UW in 2023, he was a Postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, the same university from where he received his Ph.D. in 2021. He studied Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University .cautiously optimistic at the prospect of finding life on any of the icy moons. For all we know, sunlight and/or lightning could be key components for abiogenesis, as well as other factors not present on these bodies.
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