The Planet-Hab Collaboration consists of an international group of scientists interested in the development and application of habitability models in the astrobiology field. The collaboration combines novel modeling approaches to understand and compare the suitability for life of terrestrial, planetary, and exoplanetary environments.

The Astro2020 decadal survey explicitly identifies the need for a "comprehensive multifactorial framework for habitability assessment” as part of the necessary interdisciplinary theory to answer the science question "E-Q3: How do habitable environments arise and evolve within the context of their planetary systems?” of the “Discovery Area: The Search for Life on Exoplanets”.

Press Release: Breaking Old Habits: New Models for Habitability Beyond Earth

Our session at AbSciCon 2022: Habitability Models: Constraining the potential for life within our Solar System, and Beyond

Contact

Prof. Abel Méndez, PHL @ UPR Arecibo: abel.mendez@upr.edu

Dr. Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín, LPI/USRA, rivera-valentin@lpi.usra.edu

Dr. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Technische Universität Berlin, schulze-makuch@tu-berlin.de

People

Abel Méndez, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA

Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín, Lunar and Planetary Institute, USRA, Houston, Texas, USA

Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Technische Universita ̈t Berlin, Berlin, Germany; German Research Centre for Geosciences, Section Geomicrobiology, Potsdam, Germany; Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Stechlin, Germany.

Justin Filiberto, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, USA

Ramses M. Ramírez, University of Central Florida, Department of Physics, Orlando, Florida, USA; Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Tana E. Wood, USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA

Alfonso Dávila, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA.

Chris McKay, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA

Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA

Marcos Jusino-Maldonado, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA

Nicole J. Torres-Santiago, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA

Guillermo Nery, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA

René Heller, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research; Institute for Astrophysics, University of Go ̈ttingen, Germany

Paul K. Byrne, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

Michael J. Malaska, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA

Erica Nathan, Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Marta Filipa Simões, State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau SAR, China

André Antunes, State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau SAR, China

Jesús Martínez-Frías, Instituto de Geociencias (CSIC-UCM), Madrid, Spain

Ludmila Carone, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

Noam R. Izenberg, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA

Dimitra Atri, Center for Space Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Humberto Itic Carvajal Chitty, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela

Priscilla Nowajewski-Barra, Fundación Ciencias Planetarias, Santiago, Chile

Frances Rivera-Hernández, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Corine Brown, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia​​

Kennda Lynch, Lunar and Planetary Institute, USRA, Houston, Texas, USA

David Catling, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA​​

Jorge I. Zuluaga, Institute of Physics / FCEN - Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia​​

Juan F. Salazar, GIGA, Escuela Ambiental, Facultad de Ingenier ́ıa, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia​​

Howard Chen, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA​​

Grizelle González, USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA

Madhu Kashyap Jagadeesh, Jyoti Nivas College, Bengaluru, India

Jacob Haqq-Misra, Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Seattle, Washington, USA

Julian Chela-Flores, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy

Michael Kearney, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Jut Wynne, Northern Arizona University

Publications

Méndez, A. Commentary: How to determine the right conditions for alien life. (2022) Physics Today, (15 Jun 2022), 1945-0699. DOI: 10.1063/PT.6.3.20220615a.

Méndez, A., Rivera-Valentín, E. G., Schulze-Makuch, D., Filiberto, J., Ramírez, R. M., Wood, T. E., Dávila, A., McKay, C., Ortiz Ceballos, K. N., Jusino-Maldonado, M., Torres-Santiago, N. J., Nery, G., Heller, R., Byrne, P. K., Malaska, M. J., Nathan, E., Simões, M. F., Antunes, A., Martínez-Frías, J., Carone, L., Izenberg, N. R., Atri, D., Carvajal Chitty, H. I., Nowajewski-Barra, P., Rivera-Hernández, F., Brown, C., Lynch, K., Catling, D., Zuluaga, J. I., Salazar, J. F., Chen, H., González, G., Kashyap Jagadeesh, M., Haqq-Misra, J. (2021). Habitability Models for Astrobiology. Astrobiology, 21(8), 1017-1027. DOI: 10.1089/ast.2020.2342. (arxiv.org/abs/2108.05417)

Méndez, A., Rivera-Valentín, E. G., Schulze-Makuch, D., Filiberto, J., Ramírez, R. M., Wood, T. E., Dávila, A., McKay, C., Ortiz Ceballos, K. N., Jusino-Maldonado, M., Torres-Santiago, N. J., Nery, G., Heller, R., Byrne, P. K., Malaska, M. J., Nathan, E., Simões, M. F., Antunes, A., Martínez-Frías, J., Carone, L., Izenberg, N. R., Atri, D., Carvajal Chitty, H. I., Nowajewski-Barra, P., Rivera-Hernández, F., Brown, C., Lynch, K., Catling, D., Zuluaga, J. I., Salazar, J. F., Chen, H., González, G., Kashyap Jagadeesh, M., Haqq-Misra, J., Barnes, R. ; Cockell, C. S. (2021). Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032 white paper e-id. 065; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 53, Issue 4, e-id. 065. DOI: 10.3847/25c2cfeb.20609a88. (arxiv.org/abs/2007.05491)