NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)

NASA Ames Research Center

Early Habitable Environments and the Evolution of Complexity

Principal Investigator: David Des Marais
NASA Ames Research Center
Team Website: http://amesteam.arc.nasa.gov/

The overarching goal of the NAI ARC Team’s scientific program is to understand the creation and distribution of early habitable environments in emerging planetary systems. A key emphasis of this work is to elucidate, in a conceptual sense, the interactions between contributory processes that operate over vastly differing spatial and temporal scales. This intellectual framework provides a means of integrating the Ames team’s investigations and also the diverse array of applicable research on habitability within the astrobiology community as a whole. The work is organized into six research objectives:

• Tracing spectroscopically the cosmic evolution of organic molecules from the interstellar medium to protoplanetary disks, planetesimals and finally onto habitable bodies.
• Predicting the diversity of planetary systems emerging from protoplanetary disks, with a focus on the formation of planets that provide chemical raw materials, energy, and environments necessary to sustain prebiotic chemical evolution and complexity.
• Modeling particular planetary systems that can support viable atmospheres, including a focus on chemical consequences of radiation and impacts in early atmospheres.
• Developing and evaluating a more quantitative methodology for assessing the habitability of early planetary environments particularly Mars – via capabilities that will be, or might be, deployed in situ.
• Identifying critical requirements for the emergence of biological complexity in early habitable environments by examining key steps in the origins and early evolution of catalytic functionality and metabolic reaction networks.
• Investigating radiation induced effects on biomolecular complexity as a constraint as well as an opportunity for evolution.