NASA's Kepler mission discovered nearly 1,000 planets outside our solar system, many of which could sustain life. The Hubble Telescope has seen nearly 10,000 galaxies, many of which may contain alien life forms. So it's no wonder that the agency wants to advance its program in the search for life not based on Earth.
Recently, NASA awarded seven teams of astrobiologists with $8 million each over the next five years. These teams join five other teams at NASA's Astrobiology Institute. These teams have a specific mission: find the "origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the cosmos."
"With the Curiosity rover characterizing the potential habitability of Mars, the Kepler mission discovering new planets outside our solar system, and Mars 2020 on the horizon, these research teams will provide the critical interdisciplinary expertise to help interpret data from these missions and future astrobiology-focused missions," says Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division,
The teams will look at how different environments on Earth sustain life, using that for making predictions about where life exists off-Earth. They're even studying the chemical composition of early life on Earth. In preparation for NASA's Mars 2020 mission, the teams are also tasked with figuring out how to look for and recognize life on Mars if, and when, we find it.
Although scientist Stephen Hawking believes that contact with alien life is dangerous, NASA is focusing its energy and funding into looking to the stars for signs that it exists. Not only that, but we also must prepare for that possible future meeting, especially if the life we find is intelligent, like us.
"People just consider it much more likely now that we're going to find something -- probably microbes first and maybe intelligence later," says former chief NASA historian Stephen J. Dick. "The driving force behind this is from a scientific point of view that it seems much more likely now that we are going to find life at some point in the future."
Many consider NASA's budget too small for finding alien life, and politics has played a big part in that. NASA's funding goes down every year, but the agency is attempting to soldier on, with private commercial companies helping in other areas like shuttling cargo and passengers to and from the International Space Station.
NASA is setting aside $50 million for these astrobiology teams, but the question remaining is whether that's enough for finding proof of alien life.
However, one can't blame the agency for not trying. This new effort is the first of what will be, hopefully, many more.
