NASA pledges $50 million to answer one question: where did we come from?

[The title was written by my editor.]

Seven research teams across the U.S. will receive a total of nearly $50 million for astrobiology investigation.

by John Tyburski

Copyright © Daily Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

First published at Daily Digest News on October 7, 2014

If he were alive today, Carl Sagan, host of the orginal Cosmos television program, would surely be happy to hear of renewed investment into finding life in space. After all, Sagan once said that he would be astonished if we did not eventually find extraterrestrial life. Experts at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, seem to agree and plan to fund seven new projects designed to search for life in space.

“With the Curiosity rover characterizing the potential habitability of Mars, the Kepler mission discovering new planets outside our solar system, and Mars 2020 on the horizon, these research teams will provide the critical interdisciplinary expertise to help interpret data from these missions and future astrobiology-focused missions,” said Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

NASA announced on Monday that it had selected seven recipient groups that will each receive, on average, $8 million over five years. The primary areas of focus for these research efforts, according to NASA, are the “origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.” All seven of the teams will become members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

The funded teams are located at: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s Ames Research Center (two teams), The University of Colorado at Boulder, The University of California at Riverside, and The University of Montana In Missoula.

“The intellectual scope of astrobiology is vast, from understanding how our planet went from lifeless to living, to understanding how life has adapted to Earth’s harshest environments, to exploring other worlds with the most advanced technologies to search for signs of life,” said Mary Voytek, director, astrobiology program, NASA Headquarters. “The new teams cover that breadth of astrobiology, and by coming together in the NAI, they will make the connections between disciplines and organizations that stimulate fundamental scientific advances.”