NAI EC meeting 11/17/07
Members of the NAI Executive Council present:
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Director |
Pilcher |
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Deputy Director |
Goolish |
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Team |
PI |
Representative |
Notes |
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ARC |
DesMarais |
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On phone |
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CIW |
Solomon |
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CUB |
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McCollum |
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GSFC |
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Nuth |
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IPTAI |
Pratt |
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MBL |
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Bahr |
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MIT |
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MON |
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Broderick, J |
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PSU |
Ohmoto |
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SI |
Mancinelli |
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UA |
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UCB |
Banfield |
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UCLA |
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UH |
Meech |
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On phone |
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UW-VPL |
Meadows |
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UWisc |
Johnson |
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Affiliation/Institution |
Attendee |
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NAI International Partner |
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NAI Central |
Boldt, Kirven-Brooks |
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NASA HQ |
Turner |
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NAI Team Members |
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EPO Rep |
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Other attendees |
Broderick |
Pilcher opened the meeting at 10:00 AM
Potential for European Collaborations
Pilcher and Meech described their interactions and possible collaboration opportunities with astrobiologists at meetings held in October in Europe. Many members of the EC spoke about current collaborations and agreed that NAI should pursue these opportunities.
COEL Meeting
Pilcher briefed the group on the November meeting of the Committee on the Origin and Evolution of Life. Important topics included plans for Mars Sample Return and the Astrobiology Roadmap. Pilcher solicited input on the roadmap update that was presented at the COEL meeting by Joe Nuth and Dave Des Marais.
NASA Lunar Science Institute and Lunar Science Conference
The new virtual institute announced by Alan Stern will be modeled on the NAI, the central office will be based at Ames and an annual Lunar Science Conference will be supported. Chris McKay is chairing the Science Organizing Committee for the conference and working with Steve Mackwell, Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
Report on the Biosignatures in Ancient Rocks Workshop
Hiroshi Ohmoto and Clark Johnson gave a briefing on the successful workshop held in Ontario, Canada in September. The ten day workshop included lectures and a fieldtrip to examine archean rocks with a focus on the origin of life and the environment. The workshop including both senior lecturers and students.
January 8 EC meeting in Denver
Information is available on the NAI EC pages for the upcoming in-person EC meeting. Agenda topics will include the Astrobiology Roadmap, and other topics are welcomed. The 2007 DDF-funded workshop, Remote Sensing and Monitoring of Microbial Ecosystems, will follow the meeting on January 9 and 10 in Boulder.
Cooperative Agreement Notice
The fifth NAI Cooperative Agreement Notice is expected to be released in early 2008. The report from the National Research Council, on its assessment of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, is expected as early as late November – and recommendations from the report may be incorporated into the CAN.
Report on the NAI Sample Caching workshop
Andrew Steele hosted a workshop at the Carnegie Institute on both sample caching for the Mars Science Laboratory and broader plans for other Mars sampling opportunities. Topics included contamination control of false positives from Earth organisms and the importance of balancing planetary protection while preserving the science. Suggestions included conducting biological and organics inventories, for signal to noise measurements and a witness plate exposed to everything with which the samples come in contact. Dave Des Marais also spoke about the Next Decade Science Advisory Group which maps the science goals and objectives of the MEPAG group that would benefit from a Mars Sample return, to determine a list of the types of samples and their handling, as well as what is possible by 2018.
Astrobiology Roadmap Update
John Rummel commissioned an update of the Astrobiology Roadmap. Joe Nuth and Dave Des Marais have requested input from the community. The current version was released prior to the Vision for Space Exploration and requires an update. The first draft is out for comment and it should be finalized at AbSciCon. There are coordinators for each of the seven goals.
Alan Boss – Understanding the Nature and Distribution of Habitable Environments in the Universe
Jack Farmer, Dave Des Marais, Bruce Jakosky, Explore for Past or Present in our Solar System
Lou Allamandola, Andrew Pohorille, Tori Hoehler - Origins of Life
Bruce Runnegar - Early Life on the Earth
Alfred Spoorman – Adaptation to Extreme Environments
Joe Nuth, Dave Des Marais - Future of Life, on Earth and Beyond
Vikki Meadows Dave Des Marais – Signatures of Life
Edits to the draft and new example investigations will be welcome, sent to Joe Nuth, Dave Des Marais or NAI Central. Initial input by November 30, then more global input by the January EC meeting would be ideal. NAI will provide a draft of the roadmap for community input on the NAI website for community input.
Geoff Marcy will present the next Director Seminar on December 3 at 11 AM Pacific Time on low mass extra-solar planets.
Team Round Robin
ARC
Des Marais – Tori Hoehler co-chaired a workshop on low energy scenarios for life, in which it was concluded that life can be supported with three orders of magnitude less energy than expected. This finding holds implications for life on Mars, particularly the subsurface. Catherine Tsairides, has been working with education officials in the State of Maine to use astrobiology curriculum (from TERC) for the state’s 9th grade science education. Although faced with budget cuts at Yellowstone, the Visitors Center has been rescoped to 80% of the original size, however astrobiology is still included. Catherine Tsairides and Linda Jahnke are working on exhibits and Web links.
UH
Meech - Eric Gaidos has published a review paper in Science based on the special session at the June AAS meeting, which was partly sponsored by the NAI. Bo Reipurth has published a paper in the Astronomical Journal on visual binaries in the Orion Nebula Cluster. The team has a new postdoc, who is conducting a telescopic survey of variable young stellar objects using two 16 inch telescopes in Mauna Loa and Chile. This month Meech organized a session on astrobiology at the Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium in Irvine with speakers from the NAI: Kevin Hand, JPL, Devon Burr, SETI, and Tori Hoehler. The Kavli symposium consists of young, interdisciplinary investigators, who are expected to become leaders in their fields. Meech is on the organizing committee for next year’s meeting and will plan a similar astrobiology session. There were 140 registered participants at the Workshop on the Chronology of Meteorites and the Early Solar System in Kauai in early November. Planning continues for the DDF workshop on the Origin of Water to be held in Molokai in February. Eric Gaidos and Nader Haghighpour are organizing a session for AbSciCon. Mary Kadaoka presented at the American Association of Variable Star Observers, on a collaboration between amateur astronomers and students
Montana State
Joan Broderick and Will Broderick – the team held a productive face-to-face meeting, in September, which Pilcher attended. The Team has produced their first newsletter and web page. The NAI is sponsoring a Gordon Research Conference, chaired by Broderick on Protein Radicals, in January, in Ventura, CA, with basic research relevant to the work of the Montana State Team. The meeting is at the same time as the GRC Origins of Life meeting, and the groups are planning a joint mixer with posters of interest to help identify common interests between the groups. Broderick encourages students to contact her to apply for support to attend the meeting. John Peters recently met with the University of Washington group to identify areas of common interest. The Philosophy group has planned a seminar working group on November 30. Outreach: The Team has provided a great deal of support for the statewide Montana Education Association meeting in October. This includes the keynote presentation by Mark Young, and presentations by ABRC faculty and other visiting scientists, Brad Bebout, ARC, Michele Bahr, MBL, and Catherine Tsairides, ARC to over 350 teachers in attendance. The Team also supported the National Teachers Association regional meeting and the Science Olympiad in Bozeman.
UCB
Banfield – The Team’s Metagenomics project in a hyper-saline lake in Australia should result in 1.6 billion bases of sequence data, which was collected on two field trips. They have received the first sequence from Venter Institute, and the preliminary results are encouraging. They collected microbial consortia, lipids and viruses. One interesting recent finding is that microbial communities appear to be shaped by viral predation.
CIW
George Cody – new work on organic cosmochemistry will be reported soon, in a special issue on the Stardust mission. The organic matter is spectacularly complex. Next they will begin the isotopic analysis.
VPL
Meadows – The group now has three graduate students from UW and will be hiring a postdoc for a joint VPL/UW position.
IPTAI
Pratt - The IPTAI DVD Workbook, which has been in development for years, has passed NASA product review, and the team may have the first workbook and DVD ready for AbSciCon. Marina Antonio will be a convener for AbGradCon. Her first paper is in review by Nature, looking at a high diversity candidate phyla from an alkaline lake in Oregon. TC Onstott has submitted a paper to Nature on the complete genome of microbes from the deep subsurface in South Africa. Pratt has been working on the refinement of the Roadmap and Mars Sample Return. Onstott continues collaborative work with Paul Mahaffy at Goddard for instrumentation in support of high precision methane analysis.
CUB
McCollum – The next issue of Astrobiology will have the theme Follow the Energy. Many NAI members have papers in the issue.
UA
Lucy Ziurys has been examining a chemical species from comet 17P Holmes and has found HCN, H2S and CO. Her group is especially interested in interstellar phosphorus chemistry. A former Ph.D. student has left to work at NASA Ames, with Scott Sandford. Three new graduate students interested in astrobiology have joined the group.
SETI
Mancinelli – A film crew from the History channel interviewed Mancinelli on the subject of astrobiology. Members of the SETI Team are moving forward on the Lunar Cyanobacteria Workshop to be held at Ames in late January. De Vore – abstracts for AbSciCon are due December 3.
PSU
Ohmoto - The Biosignatures in Ancient Rocks Workshop, which was sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Agouron Insititute as well as by the NAI, was held in September. The Canadians are also interested in creating an astrobiology group. A public lecture preceded the workshop, attended by 100 people, and lecturers gave interviews to the Canadian press.
WIS
Johnson – The team expects 6 postdocs by next spring, their website is up and the Team has held their first face to face meeting.
MBL
Bahr - Following publications in PNAS and Science on microbial population structures in the North Atlantic deep water, the Team has placed new data online, as Visualization and Analysis of Microbial Population Structures (VAMPS) vamps.mbl.edu, username guest, password guest - with a collection of tools to visualize data on microbial populations.
GSFC
Nuth - Mumma is in Amsterdam, the Team is getting ready to prepare a proposal for the upcoming NAI CAN.