Alien Safari!

© NASA, JPL

Alien Safari, from NASA's JPL can help you "Discover some of the most extreme organisms on our planet, and find out what they are telling astrobiologists about the search for life beyond Earth" (Alien Safari, par. 1).

The Safari includes the weird methane-ice worms found deep 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Life finds a way yet again! Though, to be fair, this doesn't necessarily mean that life can originate everywhere, just that life, once established, is tenacious and difficult to get rid of (you can, unfortunately, eliminate individual species easily, but getting rid of life entirely is extremely difficult). So it may bode well for terraformers more than for those searching for alien life. However, I still bet on life being rather common in solar systems.

Alien Safari destinations:

• Living Without Sunlight
• Highest Radiation Dose
• Most Acidic
• Farthest Underground
• Strangest Habitat
• Hottest

Reference:

"Alien Safari." Planet Quest. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 16 December 2007. <http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/AlienSafari_launch_page.html>