What is astrobiololgy

What is astrobiology?

measurable amount. STFC also funds the Aurora fellowships, awards made to young researchers to help kick off their careers in astrobiology and planetary science. One of these, Dr Giovanni Tinetti at University College London, recently published the first findings of water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Closer to home, STFC supported the development of several instruments on the Huygens probe, part of the Cassini mission launched in 1997, which landed on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005. Titan is probably too cold for life to exist on its surface but it has a dense atmosphere containing a number of chemical compounds, thought to be similar to the environment in which early life formed on Earth. The UK

Cosmochemical Analysis Network, partly funded by STFC, is a scheme for

developing new methods of analysis of minute samples of extraterrestrial material such as interstellar dust and grains embedded in meteorites. Information from this will help explain how the Solar System

formed and when conditions first became suitable for life.

Astrobiology is a new and exciting subject that brings together many different branches of science: it is the study of how life formed and developed on the Earth, the conditions that made this possible and whether these conditions can exist elsewhere in the Universe.

Because astrobiology involves diverse scientific disciplines funding of it in the UK is provided by four different research councils. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) contributes to funding for ground- and space-based telescopes and space missions in the search for possible sites for life on other planets. To date more than 370 exoplanets, planets that exist outside the Solar System, have been found. Telescopes use a number of different techniques to find exoplanets orbiting distant stars. SuperWASP, (the Wide Angle Search for Planets), partly-funded by STFC, consists of two robotic telescopes in the Canary Islands and South Africa. It is the world leader in finding exoplanets by the transit method, whereby passage of a planet in front of the star it is orbiting causes the star’s light to decrease by a

What is astrobiology?

STFC is also funding the UK’s contribution to the Aurora programme, the European Space Agency’s programme for robotic and manned exploration of the Moon and Mars and in particular its flagship mission ExoMars. This mission, now likely to form part of a large international joint rover mission to Mars in 2018, preceded by an orbiter-only mission in 2016, will investigate Mars’ surface for evidence of past and present life. ExoMars’ mission is to investigate Mars for evidence of past and present life. It is highly innovative in that it will have a digging tool allowing it to penetrate to a depth of up to two metres where there will be a greater chance of finding life unharmed by Mars’ harsh environment.

One of the UK instruments on the ExoMars rover has also received funding from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) in order to identify compounds produced by organisms such as bacteria which might help them to resist the effects of very arid environments such as that present on Mars. Life as we know it is dependent on the presence of water and EPSRC is funding research to examine tiny quantities of water trapped in Earth’s rocks for more than a billion years to detect any traces of chemical compounds which might still be

there, such as those found in once-living organisms. Many simple chemical compounds have also been found in interstellar space and EPSRC-funded research is also under way to investigate how these may react on the surfaces of interstellar dust grains to form larger molecules. Transport of such compounds to the surface of a planet such as the young Earth could have resulted in these acting as the precursors for very early life.

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funds several projects of relevance to astrobiology including studies of the environments of extremophiles, primitive bacteria which can exist in very severe (very hot, acidic, salty or lightless) conditions and which might therefore be representative of life found on other planets where environments may be more extreme than on Earth. In particular research is ongoing into how extremophiles might be sampled from hostile environments such as hydrothermal vents or so-called “black smokers” on the sea floor. These are jets of water emanating at very high temperatures and pressures from the Earth’s crust in the ocean

Useful websites for more information on astrobiology and the work of the research councils are:www.scitech.ac.ukwww.epsrc.ac.ukwww.nerc.ac.ukwww.bbsrc.ac.ukwww.astrobiologysociety.orgwww.astrobiology.cf.ac.ukwww.astrobiology.comwww.exoplanet.euwww.nai.arc.nasa.gov

depths resulting in deposition of the minerals and metals carried by the jets. Such mineral-rich environments are ideal for those extremophiles that exist in such conditions and which utilise some of the very simple chemicals produced to grow. Development of sampling mechanisms would aid in a possible future expedition to Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, on which an icy crust is believed to cover a deep saltwater liquid layer, conditions at the bottom of which might be similar to those of Earth’s ocean deeps now or in the past. NERC is also funding research into how rocks in the Earth’s crust can tell us when oxygen levels in the early Earth’s atmosphere became high enough to sustain life as we know it. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funds a number of research projects into miniaturisation, so-called “lab on a chip” technologies. This research, combined with other advances in technology such as automated sample analysis (“robot scientists”), could be adapted for working in extraterrestrial environments allowing many experiments to be carried out remotely.