Put another way, deputy principal investigator Heather Graham at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said: “Detecting life in an agnostic fashion means not using characteristics particular to Earth life. We’re working to transform how to measure biosignatures, or signs of life, in and outside of our solar system.”

This is not an easy task, to say the least. It’s somewhat like imaging a color never seen before.

So the foci are on phenomenon like the complexity of chemicals and patterns on rock surfaces, an accumulation of particular elements or compounds and evidence of the transfer of energy — all of it at levels or in distributions different from what might be expected. These are some of the reflected superstructure of life.

Johnson explained what the LAB project is looking for in more detail:

“Chemical complexity”: we’re developing new ways to determine chemical complexity using flight capable instrumentation, as recent work suggests there may be a threshold of complexity above which compounds are exceedingly unlikely to form without supporting biological machinery.”

“Elemental accumulation”: we’re looking for unexpected concentrations of elements and isotopes in compartments separate from their environments (like cells), as a kind of unexpected disequilibrium that might indicate a life form.

“Evidence of energy transfer”: the electrochemical characteristics of biotic and abiotic redox processes like iron oxidation are notably distinct, and we’re working to develop new kinds of electrochemical probes we could deploy to track those signals.”

None of these underlying dynamics presuppose a specific biochemistry and all of the approaches, Johnson said, could potentially be used on missions to other planets, moons and asteroids.