The Search for Life

This week, NASA’s Perseverance Rover lands on Mars to continue the search for life on the Red Planet. At the same time, WHOI scientists and engineers are applying their experience exploring the deepest parts of planet Earth to the quest for life beyond Mars.

Chris German is a senior scientist at WHOI with a long career built around understanding the ways life has adapted to extreme conditions on the seafloor, particularly around hydrothermal vents. Molly Curran is a young engineer who is building robots capable of reaching the deepest parts of Earth’s ocean. The two were featured in a recent episode of the news program Full Measure. In it, they describe how their work is advancing understanding of life on this planet in the hopes that we will soon learn how and where it might exist in the oceans recently discovered beneath the icy shells of planetary bodies of the outer solar system.

“The best chance we have in the next human generation to find life beyond Earth, is by exploring remote and poorly explored deep oceans,” says German.

Learn more about WHOI’s study of Ocean Worlds, as well as the development of a new fleet of robots to help explore our own ocean world, and watch the Full Measure episode to see our featured work.

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