The search for life outside the Earth has been one of the biggest quests of mankind. We have reached a level in technology that allows the first steps towards a scientific investigation. The aim of this workshop was to take an interdisciplinary look at the signatures would be indicative for past or present life on another planet, to compare them to biosignatures on Earth, and to discuss state-of-the-art in-situ instrumentas that are envisioned to search for these signatures in the exploration of the solar system as well as concepts for the search for habitable planets around other stars.
Reprinted from Space Science Reviews journal, Vol. 133/1-4
From the reviews: "This is a collection of papers from the International Space Science Institute workshop ! . The book is well laid out, with uniformity in style, clear tables and illustrations, several of which are in colour. ! Each paper has an abstract and a full set of references. ! this book is likely to grace the shelves of university libraries and specialists in astrobiology, but it is of interest to anyone with a strong fascination ! . I certainly recommend it." (Barrie W. Jones, Contemporary Physics, Vol. 51 (4), 2010)