Editor’s note: when we begin to conduct Away Team visits to other worlds that host life we will need to do an assay of how everything on these worlds works together – before visiting. One way to start is from orbit. And prior to that we need to study world from afar via telescopes. Technology such as that described below is one piece of the puzzle of characterizing an inhabited world’s biota. Doing so on a world where we also happen to live also allows us to calibrate orbital observations with “ground truth” i.e. what we can see and measure here. Even though all inhabited worlds will be unique in their own right learning how to do orbital assays as a prelude to landings and Away Teams is important.
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