Astrobiology Institute
|
Baruch Blumberg, first director of the Astrobiology
Institute
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A collaboration between NASA and academic and
research organizations to carry out interdisciplinary research in astrobiology.
The Astrobiology Institute, which began operations in July 1998, is managed
by the NASA Ames Research Center and includes among
its initial membership Arizona State University, the University of Colorado,
the Scripps Research Institute, the University of California at Irvine and
Los Angeles, Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, Woods Hole
Marine Biology Laboratory, the Carnegie Institute, the NASA
Johnson Space Center, and the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. It is designed to operate as a "virtual" institute, linking
geographically dispersed scientific teams and laboratories by the Next Generation
Internet and other modern communications tools. Institute members will pursue
research in areas such as the origin of life in the universe, the formation
and evolution of habitable worlds, the early evolution of Earth's oceans
and atmosphere, and the potential for biological evolution beyond an organism's
planet of origin. A major goal of the institute will be to develop concepts
for new missions to search for life within the solar system, and for habitable
planets and evidence of life outside the solar system. In May 1999, Baruch
Blumberg, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (for
his discovery of the hepatitis B vaccine),
was appointed the Institute's first director.
External
site
Astrobiology Institute
homepage
Related category
• ASTROBIOLOGY
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