10 Teams To Join Agency's Astrobiology Institute

NASA has awarded five-year grants, averaging $7 million each, to 10 research teams from across the country, including two from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, to study the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

The interdisciplinary teams will become new members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, located at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA. Teams from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu; Arizona State University in Tempe; the Carnegie Institution of Washington; Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA; the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY have been selected as members.

Teams from Ames and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, also have been selected.

"The research of these new teams reflects the increasing maturity of astrobiology," said NASA Astrobiology Institute Director Carl Pilcher of Ames. "They are focused on fundamental questions of life in the universe, but their work has implications for all of science. The research of these teams, together with that of the four continuing institute teams, will bridge the basic science of astrobiology to NASA's current and planned space exploration missions."

"The new teams provide a superb foundation for the institute as it enters its second decade," said Jim Green, Planetary Science Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "They bring together the many disciplines necessary for a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to studying life in the universe."

The new members join four continuing teams led by Montana State University in Bozeman, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

FMI: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov