A Brief History of Astrobiology
Astrobiology is defined as the study of life in the universe. It is a science dedicated to answering some of mankind's most basic questions: Where do we come from? and Are we alone? As people have been attempting to answer these questions since it first occurred to them to ask, the ideas now called "Astrobiology" are some of the oldest known. However, before recently, the only real way to explore the questions of Astrobiology was through speculation; little science was done and few used observations to formulate predications that could be tested. This didn't start to change until around 1958, when the actual term "Astrobiology" first began to surface in the scientific literature. Scientifically, most of the major ideas of Astrobiology were set down around this time: the idea of comets bringing water and perhaps life to Earth from space, that a nucleic acid (RNA) was the first molecule that could self-replicate in the manner of life, that Mars harbored life in some form. But at the time, few of these ideas had any way of being tested, so Astrobiology was at a standstill until around 1992.
Other Problems Facing the Development of AstrobiologyIn 1992, researchers at 4 institutions conducting research into "Exobiology," another term for Astrobiology, were organized into a NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT). This program served as a starting place for the development of the Exobiology Branch of the Space Science Division at NASA, which was then expanded in 1996 into the current Astrobiology program. Thus most of the history of Astrobiology as a science, at least in the United States, stems from the decision at NASA to provide funding for research into the questions of Astrobiology.