'Chemical Laptop' Could Search for Signs of Life Outside Earth

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

If you were looking for the signatures of life on another world, you would want to take something small and portable with you. That's the philosophy behind the "Chemical Laptop" being developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California: a miniaturized laboratory that analyzes samples for materials associated with life.

"If this instrument were to be sent to space, it would be the most sensitive device of its kind to leave Earth, and the first to be able to look for both amino acids and fatty acids," said Jessica Creamer, a NASA postdoctoral fellow based at JPL.

Like a tricorder from "Star Trek," the Chemical Laptop is a miniaturized on-the-go laboratory, which researchers hope to send one day to another planetary body such as Mars or Europa. It is roughly the size of a regular computing laptop, but much thicker to make room for chemical analysis components inside. But unlike a tricorder, it has to ingest a sample to analyze it. 

"Our device is a chemical analyzer that can be reprogrammed like a laptop to perform different functions," said Fernanda Mora, a JPL technologist who is developing the instrument with JPL's Peter Willis, the project's principal investigator. "As on a regular laptop, we have different apps for different analyses like amino acids and fatty acids."

Amino acids are building blocks of proteins, while fatty acids are key components of cell membranes. Both are essential to life, but can also be found in non-life sources. The Chemical Laptop may be able to tell the difference.

 

JPL researchers Jessica Creamer, Fernanda Mora and Peter Willis (left to right) pose with the Chemical Laptop, a device designed to detect amino acids and fatty acids. At left is a near-identical copy of the Curiosity rover, which has been on Mars since 2012.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Page 1 of 3

• Next Page >

Share on:

---

Suggested Items

Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler Elected Chair of Semiconductor Industry Association

11/22/2024 | SIA
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler has been elected Chair of the SIA Board of Directors. SIA represents 99% of the U.S. semiconductor industry by revenue and nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. chip firms.

Gartner Forecasts MENA IT Spending to Grow 7.4% in 2025

11/20/2024 | Gartner, Inc.
IT spending in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to total $230.7 billion in 2025, an increase of 7.4% from 2024, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.

NRL Completes Development of Robotics Capable of Servicing Satellites, Enabling Resilience for the U.S. Space Infrastructure

11/18/2024 | NRL
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Naval Center for Space Technology (NCST) in partnership with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) successfully completed development of a spaceflight qualified robotics suite capable of servicing satellites in orbit, Oct. 8.

Boeing Delivers Advanced O3b mPOWER Satellites to Operator SES

11/14/2024 | Boeing
Boeing teams have successfully delivered the 7th and 8th O3b mPOWER satellites to SES. These satellites, featuring Boeing’s advanced software-defined communications payload, are being transported to Cape Canaveral for a planned launch in December.

Sikorsky, Rain Successfully Demonstrate Autonomous Flight

11/12/2024 | Lockheed Martin
Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company and Rain, a leader in autonomous aerial wildfire containment technology, successfully demonstrated how an autonomous Black Hawk® helicopter can be commanded to take off, identify the location and size of a small fire, and then accurately drop water to suppress the flames.