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Executive Summary
Pages 1-6

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From page 1...
... The Committee on the Origins and Evolution of Life was charged with investigating ways to augment and integrate the contributions of astronomy and astrophysics in astrobiology -- in particular, in NASA's astrobiology program and in relevant programs in other federal agencies. The goals set for this study were as follows: · Identify areas where there can be especially fruitful collaborations between astrophysicists, biologists, biochemists, chemists, and planetary geologists.
From page 2...
... The other perspective that astronomy brings to astrobiology is that the astronomical environment -- from the host star, to the ambient interstellar gas through which a planetary system passes in its galactic journey, to cosmic explosions -- is intrinsically variable. The dominant driver of this variability is probably the host star, which is likely to be susceptible to violent chromospheric activity and nearly continuous flares when it is young or if its mass is less than that of the Sun, the most likely situation.
From page 3...
... NASA also should develop metrics to evaluate the degree to which truly interdisciplinary work involving astronomy and astrophysics is being done in the current NAI nodes. Areas That Could Benefit from Augmentation and Integration Some broad areas are relatively understudied and would be especially amenable to focused effort in the near future: the galactic environment, the radiation/particle environment, bolide bombardment, interstellar molecules and their role in prebiotic chemistry, photochemistry and its relation to photosynthesis, and molecular evolution in an astronomical context.
From page 4...
... · Geological and geochemical work to identify ejecta material in the rock record surrounding large impact basins -- in particular, to study existing evidence and search for additional signs of impact at the Permian/Triassic boundary and to document various anomalies in noble gas isotopic signatures and rare earth and other metal abundances that can be clearly linked to extraterrestrial impactors. · Return to the Moon to acquire more lunar samples to help determine when the "impact frustration" of life's origin ended by sampling more sites -- particularly sites that are older than the six sites sampled by the Apollo astronauts and the three sites sampled by the Soviet robotic sample-return missions and, especially, the oldest and largest impact basin on the Moon, the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
From page 5...
... The committee recommends to NASA, other funding agencies, and the research community the following approaches to overcoming communication barriers: · Continue and expand cross-disciplinary discussions on the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere, as are already being promoted by the NAI. · Continue intellectual exchange through interdisciplinary meetings, focus groups, a speaker program, and workshops, all targeted at augmenting and integrating astronomy and astrophysics with other astrobiology subdisciplines.
From page 6...
... nodes to engage in a self-study as part of their reporting processes to assess the progress of graduate and postdoctoral programs in training truly interdisciplinary scientists who actively engage in interdisciplinary research. · The NAI should sponsor a distinguished speaker series in astrobiology.


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