English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

The quest to find extraterrestrial life is a critical scientific endeavorwith civilization-level implications. Icy moons in our solar system arepromising targets for exploration because their liquid oceans make thempotential habitats for microscopic life. However, the lack of a precisedefinition of life poses a fundamental challenge to formulating detectionstrategies. To increase the chances of unambiguous detection, a suite ofcomplementary instruments must sample multiple independent biosignatures (e.g.,composition, motility/behavior, and visible structure). Such an instrumentsuite could generate 10,000x more raw data than is possible to transmit fromdistant ocean worlds like Enceladus or Europa. To address this bandwidthlimitation, Onboard Science Instrument Autonomy (OSIA) is an emergingdiscipline of flight systems capable of evaluating, summarizing, andprioritizing observational instrument data to maximize science return. Wedescribe two OSIA implementations developed as part of the Ocean Worlds LifeSurveyor (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 anddye-induced fluorescence. Flight-like requirements and computationalconstraints were used to lower barriers to infusion, similar to those availableon the Mars helicopter, "Ingenuity." We evaluated the OSIA's performance usingsimulated and laboratory data and conducted a live field test at thehypersaline Mono Lake planetary analog site. Our study demonstrates thepotential of OSIA for enabling biosignature detection and provides insights andlessons learned for future mission concepts aimed at exploring the outer solarsystem.

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