# Presentation: 161390

## NASA Astrobiology Institute

- NAI is a distributed institute established by NASA in 1998 to advance the new field of astrobiology
- The targets of NASA’s Exploration Vision – Earth, Moon, Mars and Beyond as well as the goals of the Astrobiology Roadmap – are the focus of scientific research within the sixteen teams of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)
- NAI’s mission is interdisciplinary research, training the next generation of astrobiologists, providing support for NASA’s missions, and exploring
- new ways to collaborate remotely

## NASA Astrobiology Institute

- NAI’s Astrobiology Drilling Program completed its second season of drilling in the oldest sedimentary rocks in Western Australia. Preliminary scientific results, tentatively confirming the authenticity of ancient biomarkers, were reported at the Fall 2004 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
- Michael Mumma’s Goddard NAI Team was one of several groups that reported the spectroscopic detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars.
- Blind sampling and analysis of Permian-Triassic boundary beds in China was organized by the NAI’s Impacts Focus Group. The goal is to test the extraterrestrial impact hypothesis for this largest known extinction event. Impacts Focus Group Co-Chair, Peter Ward, has two papers in **Science**
- in which he and his colleagues document, and then seek to explain, the extinction mechanism in the terrestrial realm.
- Abby Kavner and others from the UCLA Team have developed experimental and theoretical understanding of electrochemical effects in iron isotope fractionation that could have important implications for life detection.

## Iron isotope biosignatures?

- NAI help fund Clark Johnson’s Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. Pioneering survey studies of **iron isotope ratios** in modern and geological settings demonstrated their potential as biosignatures for organisms that use iron compounds in energy production.
- Collaboration with Ken Nealson’s **JPL NAI team** (98-03) allowed the iron isotope chemistry of iron breathing microbes (*Shewanella*) to be investigated directly.
- Ariel Anbar and colleagues of the **Harvard NAI team** (98-03) demonstrated experimentally that iron isotope effects could result from inorganic processes.
- Olivier Rouxel and colleagues from the** MBL and Carnegie NAI** teams (98-08) found a major secular change in iron isotope behavior in rocks older than 2.3 billion years (*Science*, February 18, 2005). This parallels trends in multiple sulfur isotope ratios, documented by the** Harvard and Carnegie NAI teams**, that are widely, but not universally, attributed to the lack of atmospheric oxygen prior to 2.3 billion years ago (*Nature*, January 08, 2004).
- Abby Kavner and colleagues from the** UCLA NAI team** (98-08) have discovered that electroplating

## NAI and Lunar Exploration

- NAI’s July 2004 White Paper on the Astrobiology Science Goals for Lunar Exploration was the Institute’s immediate response to the President’s Vision –
- nai.nasa.gov/institute/lunar_astrobiology.cfm
- The main points:
- The Moon preserves a record of events in the inner Solar System that were taking place as life originated on Earth. Lunar regolith studies could provide evidence of the impact and radiation histories of the Earth-Moon system and, possibly, samples from the early Earth.

- J. Scala

## NAI and Mars Exploration

- • NAI’s Mars Focus Group helped reorient NASA’s Mars exploration program following the loss of MPL
- • NAI investigators helped guide site selection for Mars Exploration Rovers
- • Former and current NAI investigators are key members of the Athena Team
- • NAI members had a central role in science definition for the MSL mission
- • Two of eight instruments selected for MSL have PIs who are NAI Co-Is
- • NAI members have served as chairs of MEPAG since 1999

## NAI and Jupiter’s Icy Moons

- NAI’s Europa Focus Group, chaired by Ronald Greeley, Arizona State University, explored the astrobiological implications of Galileo’s discovery of an ocean beneath the icy surface of Europa
- The Focus Group held three community-wide workshops, a field conference in Alaska, and provided input to the NRC’s “New Frontiers” study
- Fourteen of the 38 members of the JIMO Science Definition Team were Focus Group members
- Following the success of Huygens, the Focus Group’s recommendation for a Europa lander, makes even greater sense

- NASA/JPL

## NAI and Titan Exploration

- ESA/NASA/JPL/U.Arizona

- One of eight investigators on ESA’s Huygens Probe, Jonathan Lunine, University of Arizona, is an NAI leader
- NAI’s Titan Focus Group, which Lunine chairs, is working with the international community to develop mission concepts for the future exploration of Titan
- This year’s Josep Comas i Solà Summer School in Astrobiology, taught jointly with the Spanish Centro de Astrobiología, will focus on prebiotic chemistry and Titan
- – nai.nasa.gov/UIMP/Titan

## NAI and Exoplanets, TPF

- NAI’s Astronomy Focus Group produced a white paper “Astrobiology with JWST” – www.ciw.org/seager/NAIAFG/AFGJWST.html
- Victoria Meadows’ NAI Team, the “Virtual Planetary Laboratory” synthesizes earth and planetary sciences, astronomy and biology in support of advanced telescopicsearches for Earth-like exoplanets and habitable stellar environments
- James Kasting, VPL and Penn State NAI teams, is Chair of the TPF-C Science & Technology Definition Team