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![Ask an Astrobiologist](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090814042334im_/http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/img/text/ask-an-astrobiologist.gif)
"How canb you call Nibiru a hoax when your own IRAS detected it and you issued a press release in 1982 which made it to 8 major newspapers? "
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University of Hawaii, Manoa
The Origin, History, and Distribution of Water and its Relation to Life in the Universe
Water is the medium in which the chemistry of all life on Earth takes place. The NAI UH Team will focus on scenarios involving the sources and distribution of water in planetary systems and the delivery and incorporation of water into rocky habitable planets. The team will investigate:
The Origin of Earth’s Water – Constraining the origin of Earth’s water by better characterizing the D/H ratio of the primitive mantle
D/H in the Interstellar Medium, Disks and the Solar System – Determining the relationship of the highly deuterium-enriched circumstellar envelope material with the planet-forming disks in these systems, and investigating the evolution of D/H in a mature planetary system through observations of comets and models of ice fractionation processes
Ice Chemistry in the Solar System – Investigating the processing of primitive Solar system material and ices by energetic particles that leads to life’s precursor molecules
The Main Belt Comets – Surveying the sky for Main Belt Comets, a new class of solar system objects, in order to investigate the stability and thermal evolution of their ices and understand their place in the dynamical and physical architecture of the Solar system
Early Solar System Thermal and Aqueous Evolution – Elucidating the history of water in the early Solar system by constraining the nature and timing of aqueous alteration on the parent asteroids of primitive chondritic meteorites
Biogeochemical Tracers of Metabolisms on Earth – Investigating the role of microbially mediated reactions in diverse seafloor environments that may be analogues for other planets, assessing the interplay between these reactions and the transfer of water between the mantle, crust and oceans, and inferring how the products of microbial reactions might be used to detect extraterrestrial life
![New NAI Teams](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090814042334im_/http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/flash/newteams/images/yellow-new-teams-header.gif)
- NASA selects new NAI teams through a competitive peer review process. The October 2, 2008 press release announces the fifth round of team selections since the Institute’s founding in 1998. Following selection, NASA executes 5-year Cooperative Agreements with each team's institution. It is expected that the newly-announced teams will begin their terms in early 2009.
- Press Release: NASA Selects New Science Teams for the NAI
- University of Hawaii
- Arizona State University
- Carnegie Institution of Washington
- Pennsylvania State University
- NASA Ames Research Center
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Icy Worlds
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Titan