To enable and advance NASA s search for life beyond the solar system, the virtual planetary laboratory team will focus on a compelling scientific question: how do we recognize whether an exoplanet can…

This federal contract award (80NSSC18K0829) was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Shared Services Center to the University of Washington (UW) for research to support the search for life beyond the Solar System. The $8,973,916.00 grant does not have a set-aside designation.

The research will focus on recognizing whether an exoplanet can or does support life, by combining scientific models, observations, and data to explore planetary habitability and identify new biosignatures. The work will inform target selection for upcoming NASA missions like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and support the characterization of terrestrial exoplanets. As a leading research university, UW will leverage its expertise across multiple disciplines to address this compelling scientific question for NASA's astrobiology program.

To enable and advance NASA s search for life beyond the solar system, the virtual planetary laboratory team will focus on a compelling scientific question: how do we recognize whether an exoplanet can or does support life? In advance of challenging observations, the VPL will combine scientific models, observations, and field and laboratory data from many disciplines to explore how a planet becomes and remains habitable, and identify new biosignatures in the context of their environments. This research will inform target selection for jwst from K2, tess, and ground-based exoplanet discoveries; help observers recognize the signs of planetary habitability and life; and inform upcoming NASA missions that will observe terrestrial exoplanets such as jwst, and the habex, OST and luvoir mission concepts. Five research tasks will address our scientific question. Tasks a-d provide a suite of self-consistent planetary environments based on data and models that are validated against solar system planets. These planetary environments are then input to task e, to simulate planetary observations and determine the detectability of signs of habitability and life. Task a: solar system analogs for exoplanets. We will use observations and atmospheric models of earth and venus, as well as realistic simulations of the distant solar system and other planetary systems, to explore processes and remote-sensing discriminants relevant to habitable environments, biosignatures, and false positives. Task b: the earth through time. We will undertake an interdisciplinary synthesis of field, laboratory and modeling efforts to constrain environmental, ecological, and remotely observable parameters of early earth and similar exoplanets around other STARS, as a function of dominant metabolism. Task c: the habitable planet. We will develop and use coupled stellar, orbital, interior and 1-d to 3-d atmospheric models to explore terrestrial exoplanet formation, dynamics, composition, atmospheric evolution and habitability. These analyses will inform habitability assessments to prioritize promising exoplanets for biosignature searches. Task d: the living planet. We will integrate field and laboratory research with coupled chemical, climate and ecosystem models to explore the nature and detectability of biosignatures for different geochemical and stellar environments. We will identify new remotesensing atmospheric, surface and temporal biosignatures and their false positives and negatives, and quantify the environmental limits to photosynthetic productivity. Task e: the observer. We will combine observations, analysis techniques and simulations to improve the detection and characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets. We will improve retrieval of planetary properties from exoplanet mapping and from direct imaging, transit transmission, and high-resolution spectroscopy. Our analyses will determine optimal measurements and observation strategies for terrestrial exoplanet characterization. The proposed effort benefits astrobiology and the NAI with a proven, productive, interdisciplinary science team whose research addresses key astrobiology program goals, including constructing habitable worlds , identifying, exploring and characterizing environments for habitability and biosignatures and the coevolution of life and the physical environment. The UW s astrobiology dual-title PHD program and our astrobiology research opportunities for minority undergraduates strongly support the training of the next generation of astrobiologists. Our team members will continue to provide key scientific leadership for relevant NASA missions. The VPL will leverage the massively interdisciplinary collaboration enabled by the NAI to provide a unique synthesis of NASA planetary and earth science mission data, modeling and retrieval techniques that inform and support NASA astrobiology and astrophysics mission objectives.