"I've read that microbes survived an early mission to the Moon, most recently in David Grinspoon's book 'Lonely Planets.'"
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Question
Can life develop on an earth-sized moon of a jovian planet that orbits in the habitable zone of its parent star's system?
The short answer to all three questions is that we do not know. A large moon of a jovian planet can have stable conditions within the range we consider habitable (depending on its temperature) and thus seems a likely possibility. Life that uses ammonia instead of liquid water is speculative; usually we do not consider such an environment to be habitable, but no one knows. On the third question, a recent workshop on red dwarfs held at the SETI Institute suggested that such a planet might indeed be habitable. David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
October 31, 2005
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