Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and destiny of life in the universe. It uses multiple scientific disciplines and space technologies to address these fundamental questions. While these questions are age-old, advances in science and space technology make it possible for us to find answers to them. We have discovered more planets outside our solar system than in it. Life has been found to exist under conditions previously thought impossible. The discovery of life on Mars or Europa would add priority to the search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy, and to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
There are three paths along which the search for life is being pursued:
To detect such transmissions a radiotelescope (1420 MHz) has been collecting microwave spectra with over 10,000 discrete frequencies. The telescope currently collects about 4000 megabytes of data per day. These data are being processed using discriminant analysis of signals, autocorrelation, FFT DSP, and SETI-EZ, parallel computing program for use with clusters of about 50 Unix workstations. The results of these studies will be presented.