The Viking landers conducted the only life-detection mission outside Earth nearly 40 years ago. We believe it is time to resume this proactive search for life and propose a new approach based on Locally Targeted Ecosynthesis (LoTE) missions: the engineering of local habitable hotspots on planetary surfaces to reveal any subdued biosphere and enhance the expression of its biological activity. LoTE missions are based on a minimum set of assumptions about life, namely, the need for liquid solvents, energy sources, and nutrients, and the limits imposed by UV and ionizing radiation. The most promising destinations for LoTE missions are Mars and Saturn's moon Titan. We describe two LoTE mission concepts that would enhance the unique environmental conditions on Mars and Titan to reveal a subdued biosphere easily detectable with conventional instruments by supplying biologically essential yet critically limited compounds and by engineering local habitable conditions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 21. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 December 2022.
All research outputs
#1,761,264
of 25,377,790 outputs
Outputs from Astrobiology
#342
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Outputs of similar age
#14,763
of 207,027 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Astrobiology
#7
of 20 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,377,790 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,394 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 39.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 207,027 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 20 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 65% of its contemporaries.
