NASA's Astrobiology Programs Ignore One Another

NASA Awards Grant for New Life Detection Project, NASA GSFC

"NASA has awarded funding for a new interdisciplinary project called the Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures (LAB). The award, totaling nearly $7 million dollars, will be used to develop new, non-Earth like life detection approaches for use on Mars and on Jupiter and Saturn's icy moons."

NASA Making Changes to its Astrobiology Program, earlier post

"To better support the broad, interdisciplinary field of astrobiology - the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe - NASA is announcing a new programmatic infrastructure for the Astrobiology Program."

New Report Calls For NASA To Expand Astrobiology Research, earlier post

"To advance the search for life in the universe, NASA should support research on a broader range of biosignatures and environments, and incorporate the field of astrobiology into all stages of future exploratory missions, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine."

Keith's note: The people at the Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures (LAB) just got $7m from NASA - specifically from NASA GSFC. Even though this is overtly Astrobiology-related, the official NASA press release makes *zero* mention of "Astrobiology". The grantee makes no mention of anything related to NASA Astrobiology on their website. In addition, no mention is made of this Astrobiology-rich grant award at https://astrobiology.nasa.gov, https://nai.nasa.gov, or https://science.nasa.gov

I'm really shaking my head at this one since this entire effort is 200% about Astrobiology - and it resonates with what the recent NAS report and Congress want NASA to be doing with regard to Astrobiology - specifically with regard to Europa. If NASA is going to be re-organizing its Astrobiology research, a good place to start would be on super simple things like this. One hand does not seem to know - or care - what the other is doing in Astrobiology with NASA funding.

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