A committee of top scientists reviewing NASA's five-year-old astrobiology program gives it an overall thumbs up while recommending the space agency revise its approach and improve coordination with other, similar federal research programs.
The report also praises the privately run SETI Institute and its search for intelligent life and calls it worthy of more notice by mainstream scientists and agencies.
In the late 1990s, NASA created its first "roadmap" for astrobiology, an emerging discipline that incorporates astronomy, biology and many other fields in an effort to characterize life, how it began and evolved on Earth and whether and where it might exist elsewhere in the universe.
That initial roadmap is now outdated, according to a report scheduled to be issued today by the National Research Council (NRC), which conducted the independent review at NASA's request.
SPACE.com and Space News obtained an advance copy of the report, titled "Life in the Universe: An Examination of the United States and International Programs in Astrobiology." The committee that produced it was co-chaired by Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona and John Baross from the University of Washington.
The report praises the space agency for fostering a quick and effective flourishing of astrobiology, in part by setting up a virtual research lab, the NASA Astrobiology Institute, that is distributed across more than a dozen universities and NASA agencies around the United States.
But in the five years since NASA coined the term "astrobiology," various fields it encompasses have seen dramatic advances, the report notes.
Roughly 100 planets have been found to orbit other stars, for example. Solar systems discovered only this year and containing planets in Jupiter-like orbits illustrate that our solar system is probably not unique. Meanwhile, genetic researchers and biologists have made great strides in understand what makes life tick. It often ticks in extremely hot and cold places, they have learned.
Much of astrobiology concerns the characterization and search for simple, microbial life.
However, the report called the SETI Institute's search for extraterrestrial intelligence perhaps the most romantic venture in astrobiology yet said it has had a checkered reception by scientists and federal lawmakers. This portion of the SETI Institute's research survives almost entirely on private funding, having had little success in recent years courting NASA or the National Science Foundation (NSF). Other aspects of the SETI Institute's work, involving general biological, chemical and astronomical research of life, do receive federal funding.
The new report stops short of recommending more funding for the search for intelligent life, instead saying the SETI Institute's efforts in this area are worthy of notice by relevant federal agencies.
NASA had once funded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but that funding was removed by Congress in the early 1990s. Lunine, co-chair of the report committee, said in a telephone interview that the SETI Institute "deserved a slap on the back" for keeping the its SETI program going with private funding, and for doing it well.
"We didn't see that there was any reason to change the mix," Lunine said. However, he hopes the report will cause politicians to reconsider the search for intelligent life as a viable astrobiology endeavor.
Past NRC reports have similarly embraced SETI's efforts, said Christopher Chyba, the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute and an associate professor at Stanford University.
"SETI is now endorsed scientifically by both the astronomers and the biologists," Chyba said. "In light of this, the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence should certainly be allowed to compete on a level playing field under competitive peer review in appropriate NASA or NSF programs. An endorsement of the value of SETI for astrobiology in this current NRC report emphasizes SETI's natural place in any comprehensive scientific approach to astrobiology."
NASA is already drafting a new roadmap for astrobiology. A public comment and suggestion period ended in June.
The new NRC report was presented to NASA yesterday.
"We have briefed the NASA folks on this report and my sense is that they are going to take it seriously," Lunine said. "The ink is not dry on the roadmap."
The NRC report suggests the space agency investigate overlaps and force its NASA Astrobiology Institute to cooperate more closely with the NASA Origins program, which also examines the origin of life, along with the origin of the solar system and the universe.
A new roadmap for the origins program is also being drafted. Lunine said NASA should consider a "super roadmap" that spells out how various programs can best benefit from cooperation and division of labor.
Finally, the report notes that while NASA has led the way, astrobiology is beginning to flourish in Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe. NASA should work to ease international regulations governing technology transfer in order to work more closely with astrobiologists around the world.
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