"There are great possibilities in expanding the habitable zone beyond our traditional blinders on that vision where it's Earth or nothing."
That's Dr. Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She's currently working on a mission to study Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons with a subsurface ocean. Jupiter -- and, by association, Europa -- is well outside of the "habitable zone," the gauge astronomers have used for years to determine whether a planet can sustain liquid water, a major precursor for life. But in Phillips' view, being outside of this zone doesn't automatically mean the moon or planet is devoid of life.
At SXSW, Phillips and a panel of NASA scientists discussed how they're approaching the search for alien life within our own solar system and beyond -- and, as it turns out, they're not necessarily looking for another Earth.
