News and Views

Season's Greetings from the EANA President

Dear EANA Members and Friends,

As we approach the end of the year, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and engagement with EANA throughout 2025.
We successfully held EANA2025 in Lisbon, Portugal, an event attended by 188 participants, which fostered vibrant discussions and collaborations. The wide range of topics and the outstanding quality of presentations demonstrated that our field is truly thriving. It was also wonderful to see a strong turnout of early-career researchers, many of whom participated in AbGradE, highlighting the bright future of our community. The reinstated General Assembly was a great success, providing an excellent opportunity to reconnect and actively engage with the community. The round-table sessions with ESA were also particularly valuable, strengthening ties between EANA and ongoing ESA activities.
This year, we also elected new members to the EANA Council and Executive Board. I am honoured to have been elected as President and look forward to building on EANA\'s strong legacy. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the outgoing team for their dedication and hard work. I am especially grateful to Jean-Pierre de Vera for his leadership over the past few years. I warmly welcome the new members to the council. A special thank you goes to Lena Noack for continuing as Vice-President, to Ruth-Sophie Taubner for stepping into the other Vice-President role, to Silvana Pinna and Keyron Hickman-Lewis for becoming Secretaries, and to Frédéric Foucher for continuing as Treasurer.
The recent ESA Ministerial Council reaffirmed Europe\'s strong commitment to space, enabling programs such as Terrae Novae, which supports human and robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, including the Rosalind Franklin rover, now scheduled for launch in 2028. Furthermore, the Council endorsed the L4 mission, an ambitious plan to search for evidence of life in Enceladus's subsurface ocean. These investments are pivotal for European astrobiology, driving exploration of planetary environments and advancing technologies that will deepen our understanding of life\'s potential beyond Earth.
On behalf of EANA, I wish you a joyful holiday season and a successful, inspiring year ahead. I hope to see you all at EANA2026, which will be held from the 1st to the 4th of September, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. This event will be particularly special as we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of EANA.

Warm regards,
Karen Olsson-Francis

On behalf of the Executive Board
Lena Noack, Ruth-Sophie Taubner, Silvana Pinna, Keyron Hickman-Lewis and Frédéric Foucher

Added 19 Dec 2025

Statement of Support for Ukraine

The EANA community deeply deplores the present war in the Ukraine and offers its heartfelt moral support to the Ukrainian people. We are lucky to work in a world where science transcends frontiers and brings scientists from different countries together for peaceful research. We reach out also to our Russian colleagues who are as negatively influenced by these events as we Europeans (and, in general, the international community). We therefore call on all scientists and EANA members to support the Ukrainian people, our colleagues in the east, and free science, hoping for a rapid return to peaceful conditions on our shared continent.

Please also see the statement published by the Europlanet Society, with whom we will jointly organize our annual meeting (see EANA@EPSC2022) this year, with links to different European support schemes for our Ukrainian colleagues and friends.

Added 3 Mar 2022
EANA Conference 2026
The EANA 2026 Conference will be organised by the Space Exploration Institute in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, from the 1st (Tuesday) to the 4th (Friday) September 2026. The main theme will be "Astrobiology Missions" with a special focus on the “ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mission”, but contributions on all topics within the field of Astrobiology are invited. The EANA 2026 LOC is chaired by Jean-Luc Josset.
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Research highlight

Westall et al. (2025): Insights from early life in the 3.45-Ga Kitty’s Gap Chert for the search for elusive life in the Universe

Nature Astronomy 2025, , , DOI:10.1038/s41550-025-02661-0

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