Alien-hunting laser could find life on Mars 'within the next few years'

A handheld laser could help find aliens on Mars or Jupiter’s moon Europa by analyzing the chemistry of tiny planetary materials.

A University of Maryland–led team announced the NASA-funded device, a scaled-down version of a 400-pound drug discovery instrument used in labs that can be easily stowed away and maintained on space missions payloads.

The device, weighing just 17 pounds, uses a pulsed ultraviolet laser to remove tiny planetary particles from planetary material, which are analyzed by an Orbitrap looking for organic compounds.