University of California, Riverside | 2019 Feb 14
NASA is uniting experts across multiple disciplines to investigate life's beginnings on our planet -- and to explore if and how life sprung up elsewhere in the universe
Did life on Earth originate in Darwin's warm little pond, on a sunbaked shore, or where hot waters vent into the deep ocean? And could a similar emergence have played out on other bodies in our solar system or planets far beyond? These questions lie at the center of research in NASA's new Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments, or PCE3, Consortium.
One of five cross-divisional research coordination networks with the NASA Astrobiology Program, PCE3 aims to identify planetary conditions that might give rise to life's chemistry. One goal of PCE3 is to guide future NASA missions targeting discovery of habitable worlds.
"This new consortium has the potential to transform how we research the origins of life. The consortium will advance understanding of how life begins, by cross-fertilizing the community, enabling new collaborations, and fundamentally changing the dialogue across diverse intellectual expertise," said Lori Glaze, acting director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.
One of the objectives of this community is to better understand early Earth environments and make this knowledge accessible to a broad scientifically diverse community through a virtual interactive portal.