Astrobiology
Institute

Astrobiology addresses two of the most fundamental questions posed by humanity: how life arises in the Universe and whether Earth constitutes the sole cradle of life.

Today, Astrobiology is entering a data-rich era, reaching a new level of scientific maturity. Questions that were once treated primarily as theoretical or philosophical are now being transformed into a strictly grounded scientific field, involving sample-return missions, planetary exploration, laboratory astrochemistry, and large-scale data analysis.

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered orbiting other stars in our Galaxy. Material samples returned from the asteroid Bennu have confirmed that Solar System bodies contain a much broader spectrum of chemical compounds with biological interest than could previously be documented solely through meteorites. Measurements from the plumes of Enceladus continuously strengthen the hypothesis that life-friendly chemistry can be maintained in ocean worlds. Laboratory and observational studies converge on the fact that some of the molecular precursors of prebiotic chemistry are already formed in interstellar clouds and protostellar environments, even before planet formation is complete.

The challenge now is to pursue such evidence for the existence of life beyond our Earth—to detect, classify, and reliably interpret them within noisy and heterogeneous data. It is precisely at this point that substantial progress can be achieved through advanced Artificial Intelligence methods, as machine learning approaches are already demonstrating that it is possible to recover weak biosignatures even from low signal-to-noise ratio spectra.