English

The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology

In the opening weeks of 1998 a news article in the British journal Nature reported that NASA was about to enter biology in a big way. A ''virtual'' Astrobiology Institute was gearing up for business, and NASA administrator Dan Goldin told his external advisory council that he would like to see spending on the new institute eventually reach 100 million per year. ''You just wait for the screaming from the physical scientists (when that happens),'' Goldin was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, by the time of the second Astrobiology Science Conference in 2002, attended by seven hundred scientists from many disciplines, NASA spending on astrobiology had reached nearly half that amount and was growing at a steady pace. Under NASA leadership numerous institutions around the world applied the latest scientific techniques in the service of astrobiology's ambitious goal: the study of what NASA's 1996 Strategic Plan termed the ''living universe.'' This goal embraced nothing less than an understanding of the origin, history, and distribution of life in the universe, including Earth. Astrobiology, conceived as a broad interdisciplinary research program, held the prospect of being the science for t

Sign in with your free account to read, download EPUBs or listen.