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New Study Adds to Finding of Ancient Life Signs In Mars Meteorite, NASA
"Using more advanced analytical instruments now available, a Johnson Space Center research team has reexamined the 1996 finding that a meteorite contains strong evidence that life may have existed on ancient Mars."
More Mars Meteorite ALH84001 Discoveries Published, earlier post
Keith's note: This is interesting news. Yet I see no mention that NASA HQ issued the release - or makes mention of it on NASA.gov, at SMD, or on its Mars page but JSC's website mentions it. Yet the one places where you'd most expect to find mention, NASA's main Astrobiology website and the NASA Astrobiology Institute website, have no mention of this press release or featured publications. Oh yes - it was published three weeks ago.
Curiously, NASA's Astrobiology program emerged back in 1996/1997 as a direct result of the announcement of the initial ALH84001 research results. How odd that the same topic gets such little attention today. Then again, the JSC press release does not bother to offer a link to - or mention of - NASA's Astrobiology program. Similarly odd.
Inevitably, if you dig deep enough you will see that this is all about turf - who funded what (or who did not fund it or who used to fund it but no longer does ad nauseum) and the buzz word(s) associated with that money. In my mind, as far as this research goes, "astrobiology" = "exobiology" = "life on Mars". NASA funded this research - not a subunit or fiefdom thereof. What are all of you stove pipe polishers going to do when all of the pending new White House-driven educational projects are launched at NASA? Are you going to be hindered by these self-imposed semantic and budgetary sandboxes when you try to explain topics to students?
That's one of the biggest problems with NASA, the right hand and left hand don't know what each other is doing. NASA's communications skills are severely lacking.