Excerpt from the preliminary Preface of the Second Edition

Since the publication of The New Science of Astrobiology (Chela-Flores, 2001), early in the year 2001, two significant events have taken place raising the subject from the beginning of the century to its present maturity a decade later. Firstly, at that time the Galileo Mission still had two years to complete its task, which turned out to be an outstanding survey of the Jovian system, especially of its intriguing satellite Europa. Secondly, the successful outcome of the Cassini Huygens Mission on its way to Saturn went beyond all expectations of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the United States of America National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Cassini had been launched four years earlier and Huygens was to land on Titan three years after the publication of our first edition.
    Besides, we had no idea that another satellite of Saturn, Enceladus, was going to lure the scientific community with the most surprising jets of water exuding an air of mystery, hinting at a submerged inhabitable ocean of salty water. Ahead of the date of publication of our book was the awareness of the Earth-like surface morphology and hydrosphere of Titan with its prominent lake system. It dawned upon us that Titan was the fourth body of the Solar System that possibly contained a water ocean, thus joining our planet and Jupiter's three Galilean satellites: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Titan appears now to be the only planetary body besides the Earth to have persistent, almost permanent liquid bodies on its surface. These surprising aspects of Titan were unknown to us in 2001. In our first edition, at the end of Chapter 9, we anticipated the possibility of the emergence of an autochthonous biology on Titan, but left our readers with a word of caution to wait until the present post Cassini-Huygens era before advancing further hypotheses on this most basic issue of astrobiology. We now discuss this issue in Chapter 9. The new scientific landmarks of the first decade of the present century warrant a new look at the same subject matter. The urgency of this undertaking is emphasized by the much deeper insights that we have gained into the geophysics of Mars. Some remarkable events include the analysis of its surface by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Martian water ice exposed by the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, not forgetting the much clearer views that are now emerging on Martian paleolimnology. Some of this progress due largely to the stunning images retrieved by ESA's Mars Express and subsequent missions to the Red Planet.
    We have sadly witnessed during the three decades preceding the publication of the first edition of this book, The New Science of Astrobiology, a most unfortunate missed opportunity regarding the acquisition of further insights into our own satellite. In the present Second Edition this particular topic is being reviewed, namely the ongoing revolution of interest in the Moon. In October 2007, Japan sent up the Kaguya spacecraft. A month later, China's Chang'e-1 entered lunar orbit. This was followed by India's Chandrayaan-1, whose objective was to map not only the surface of the moon, but also what lies underneath. We are convinced that promising new instrumentation, such as the penetrator technology, especially the work of the British Penetrator Consortium, will be able to demonstrate in the coming decade communication and navigation technologies that will support the eventual return to the Moon and the exploration of other planets and satellites of the inner and outer Solar System.
    Beyond the terrestrial planets this renewed interest in our own satellite will be useful as a platform to improve on the achievements of the Galileo Mission. The benefits will concern all the satellites of Jupiter, especially Europa's intriguing non-water elements on its icy surface that will be elucidated by the forthcoming Europa-Jupiter System Mission (EJSM). With combined efforts focused on our own satellite by India, China, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, ESA and NASA, The Science of Astrobiology has new exciting results and discoveries to review. Consequently, at the present time it is appropriate to attempt to reflect on current scientific progress with a broad canvas ranging from cosmic evolution to the implications in the humanities of the inevitable discovery of universality of biology.
    There is still the challenge of taking into account the search for exo-intelligence—intelligent behavior elsewhere in the universe—with the help of the gigantic leaps in radio astronomy that are expected to come early in the 2020s from the Square Kilometer Array (SKA discussed in Chapter 11). Since the year 2001, only six years after the seminal discovery of a planet of the star 51 Pegasi that was reported in our first edition, a whole spectrum of further "exoplanets" have arisen amongst our galactic neighbors: Jovian-like gaseous giants, super Neptunes and super-Earths are constantly being added to the astronomer's catalogs. With the Kepler Space Telescope, a NASA Mission launched in 2009,  Earth-like planets are now within reach of observation. Not only a large number of exoplanets are now known, but also solar systems with several planets each have been identified. The possibility of searching for exomoons will also be raised in Chapter 10. This new broad vision of the cosmos and its possible habitability has given additional strong support to the search for intelligent behavior with the tools of the bioastronomers. One of the factors of the Drake Equation—the number of possible inhabitable planets—is slowly, but steadily coming to our attention, especially with Kepler.
    The many books that are now available represent another significant progress in astrobiology. In 2001 we found it difficult to identify a single-author book especially written on astrobiology. They were not generally known (not even to the present author). Now the situation is much better and our bibliography at the end of this volume is consequently much richer, providing our readers with a most enjoyable, instructive and comprehensive view of our subject (cf., the bibliographic references listed at the end of the Preface offer the reader a small sample of a growing list of books).
    The writing this second edition of the book coincided in its first stages with the double anniversary of Charles Darwin, the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, possibly the most influential book ever published in any branch of science. We have profited from this remarkable coincidence, in order to underline “the biology” of astrobiology (cf., Introduction). Being a multidisciplinary subject, astrobiology sometimes regretfully neglects the life sciences, as there are so many other aspects to keep in mind, such as chemical evolution, the earth sciences, the physical sciences and cutting-edge technology.  
    Finally, the emphasis we attempted to imprint on our previous book The New Science of Astrobiology made a very modest effort in setting the scientific subject appropriately amongst other sectors of culture that are the natural frontiers of astrobiology. These boundaries are philosophy and theology, branches of the humanities asking similar questions to the basic issues of astrobiology (origin, evolution, distribution and destiny of life in the universe). In the meantime I have dedicated a full volume to this aspect of astrobiology in A Second Genesis Stepping-Stones Towards the Intelligibility of Nature (Chela-Flores, 2009). We have tried in this new edition of The Science of Astrobiology to benefit from the experience gained during these last decade while enjoying the multiple fascinating aspects of astrobiology and its cultural frontiers.
    

Julian Chela-Flores,
Trieste, Italy,
February 15, 2011

References
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Basiuk, V. A. (2010) Astrobiology Emergence, Search and Detection of Life.  American Scientific Publishers, Stevenson Ranch, California, USA.

Chela-Flores, J. (2001) The New Science of Astrobiology From Genesis of the Living Cell to Evolution of Intelligent Behavior in the Universe. Series: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology , Band 3 Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 251 p.

Chela-Flores, J. (2009) A second Genesis: Stepping-stones towards the intelligibility of nature, World Scientific Publishers, Singapore, 248 pp.

Gilmour, I. and Sephton, M. A. (editors) (2004) An Introduction to Astrobiology, Cambridge University Press.

Horneck, G. and Rettberg, P. (eds.) (2007) Complete Course in Astrobiology, Wiley-VCH, Berlin, 414 pp.
 
Impey, C. (2007) Our Search for Life in the Universe, Random House 416 pp.

Impey, C. ed. (2010) Talking about life: conversations on astrobiology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 408 pp.

Jastrow, R. and Rampino, M. (2008), Origins of life in the universe, Cambridge University Press, 395 pp.

Lunine, J. (2005) Astrobiology: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Addison-Wesley 450 pp.