What is the difference between space science and astrobiology?
Michael: It’s an interesting question. Those of us who have worked here at NASA for awhile in what’s called the “space science” branch feel like we’ve essentially been doing astrobiology for a long time, and we have been studying the chemical constituents of the universe in order to figure out whether the right raw materials are there in order to have life exist elsewhere. We’ve also been doing laboratory studies of those things, like Yvonne said, and pointing telescopes up at these sources in order to answer that very important question. Now recently in the last few years the term astrobiology has been introduced in order to sort of summarize what it is that we do. So astrobiology is kind of what we already did. I should also say that there are plenty of people who are space scientists who are not answering the life questions. It’s possible to study the atmosphere of a planet or the geology of a planet or the chemical constituents of a star, questions that don’t necessarily go right a
