Science Autonomy for Ocean Worlds Astrobiology: A Perspective

Theiling, Bethany; Chou, Loretta B.; Poian, Victoria Da; Battler, M.; Raimalwala, K.; Arévalo, Ricardo; Neveu, Marc; Ni, Ziqin; Graham, Heather; Elsila, Jamie E.; Thompson, B. J.

doi:10.1089/ast.2021.0062

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…The physical limitations of data transmission for planetary missions-known as the "bandwidth barrier"-directly hinders the search for extant life (Castano et al 2007;Theiling et al 2022) and was identified as a major challenge in the recent Planetary Science Decadal Survey (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2023). This limitation results primarily from the inverse square law that governs electromagnetic propagation.…”

Section: Data Bandwidth Limitations At Interplanetary Distancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To support this analysis, we will refer to Table 7, which calculates the time-to-ground speeds for computing and downlinking ASDPs compared to the more conventional approach of downlinking raw data after ZIP compression. We also continue our focus on microscopes for biosignature detection, but the benefits of science autonomy for other instruments are discussed elsewhere (Francis et al 2017;Mauceri et al 2022;Theiling et al 2022).…”

Section: Potential Impacts On Mission Concept Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy for the Detection of Microscopy Biosignatures on the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor

Wronkiewicz,

Lee,

Mandrake

et al. 2024

Planet. Sci. J.

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The quest to find extraterrestrial life is a critical scientific endeavor with civilization-level implications. Icy moons in our solar system are promising targets for exploration because their liquid oceans make them potential habitats for microscopic life. However, the lack of a precise definition of life poses a fundamental challenge to formulating detection strategies. To increase the chances of unambiguous detection, a suite of complementary instruments must sample multiple independent biosignatures (e.g., composition, motility/behavior, and visible structure). Such an instrument suite could generate 10,000× more raw data than is possible to transmit from distant ocean worlds like Enceladus or Europa. To address this bandwidth limitation, Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy (OSIA) is an emerging discipline of flight systems capable of evaluating, summarizing, and prioritizing observational instrument data to maximize science return. We describe two OSIA implementations developed as part of the Ocean World Life Surveyor (OWLS) prototype instrument suite at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The first identifies life-like motion in digital holographic microscopy videos, and the second identifies cellular structure and composition via innate and dye-induced fluorescence. Flight-like requirements and computational constraints were used to lower barriers to infusion, similar to those available on the Mars helicopter, “Ingenuity.” We evaluated the OSIA's performance using simulated and laboratory data and conducted a live field test at the hypersaline Mono Lake planetary analog site. Our study demonstrates the potential of OSIA for enabling biosignature detection and provides insights and lessons learned for future mission concepts aimed at exploring the outer solar system.

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Section: Data Bandwidth Limitations At Interplanetary Distancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Potential Impacts On Mission Concept Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy for the Detection of Microscopy Biosignatures on the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor

Wronkiewicz,

Lee,

Mandrake

et al. 2024

Planet. Sci. J.

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“…In the future, these somewhat distinct applications are expected to converge in the quest for more efficient instrument operations, with on-board data analysis being fed back into intelligent instrument tasking, scene selection and selective data downlink [16]. In this paper the applications we discuss are exclusively feature recognition of returned images, however we note that in future this type of application may merge with onboard instrument operations.…”

Section: Previous Image Recognition Applications In Planetary Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Feature Extraction and Classification from Planetary Science Datasets enabled by Machine Learning

Nixon,

Yahn,

Duncan

et al. 2023

2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference

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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Copyright

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“…However, as extant life may have resulted from a separate genesis, an in‐situ instrument must be sensitive to as broad a spectrum of life‐like molecules as possible. This challenging analytic goal must be achieved on an ice sample, using only the limited computation available to space missions, and in an autonomous fashion (Howell et al., 2020 ; Tan‐Wang & Sell, 2019 ; Theiling et al., 2022 ; Willis et al., 2020 ).…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous CE Mass‐Spectra Examination for the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor

Mauceri

Lee

Wronkiewicz

et al. 2022

Earth and Space Science

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The search for extraterrestrial life is one of the great motivators for exploring worlds beyond Earth. Ocean worlds, such as Europa and Enceladus, offer protected, potentially habitable environments that may be sampled from the surface through inclusions in thermally convected ice, pressure driven fluid through fractures, or deposition by active plumes, for example (Carr et al., 1998;Postberg et al., 2009;Quick et al., 2017). To prepare for such deep space missions to these icy worlds, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is developing the ocean worlds life surveyor (OWLS), an in-situ instrument suite capable of detecting multiple, independent biosignatures indicative of life. At the molecular scale, terrestrial life may be detected by the presence of key organic compounds such as metabolites and amino acids. However, as extant life may have resulted from a separate genesis, an in-situ instrument must be sensitive to as broad a spectrum of life-like molecules as possible. This challenging analytic goal must be achieved on an ice sample, using only the limited computation available to space missions, and in an autonomous fashion (

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Science Autonomy for Ocean Worlds Astrobiology: A Perspective

Cited by 10 publications

References 73 publications

Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy for the Detection of Microscopy Biosignatures on the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor

Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy for the Detection of Microscopy Biosignatures on the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor

Feature Extraction and Classification from Planetary Science Datasets enabled by Machine Learning

Autonomous CE Mass‐Spectra Examination for the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor

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