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Authors thank all those individuals, UK research councils, funding agencies, nonprofit organisations, companies and corporations and UK and non-UK government agencies, who have so generously supported our aspirations and hopes over the last 5 years and supported UKCA projects. They include the STFC, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), the EU, the UK Space Agency, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), The Crown Estate, Cleveland Potash and others. The Astrobiology Academy has been supported by the UK Space Agency (UKSA), National Space Centre, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), Dynamic Earth, The Royal Astronomical Society, The Rotary Club (Shetlands) and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. The UK Centre for Astrobiology (UKCA) was set up in 2011 as a virtual center to contribute to astrobiology research, education, and outreach. After 5 years, we describe this center and its work in each of these areas. Its research has focused on studying life in extreme environments, the limits of life on Earth, and implications for habitability elsewhere. Among its research infrastructure projects, UKCA has assembled an underground astrobiology laboratory that has hosted a deep subsurface planetary analog program, and it has developed new flow-through systems to study extraterrestrial aqueous environments. UKCA has used this research backdrop to develop education programs in astrobiology, including a massive open online course in astrobiology that has attracted over 120,000 students, a teacher training program, and an initiative to take astrobiology into prisons. In this paper, we review these activities and others with a particular focus on providing lessons to others who may consider setting up an astrobiology center, institute, or science facility. We discuss experience in integrating astrobiology research into teaching and education activities. Publisher PDF

To test the rate at which a lifeless but habitable environment (uninhabited habitat) can be colonized, artificial endolithic habitats were constructed in the laboratory and exposed to the natural environment. They were composed of sterile stacked sintered glass discs (stacks) containing CHNOPS elements, liquid water, energy and a carbon source, making them habitable for aerobic respiring organisms and phototrophs. One set of stacks was exposed fully to atmospheric conditions and one set was covered from direct overhead atmospheric input and precipitation. The process of colonization was heterogeneous across the stacks. After 3 months, all uninhabited habitats were colonized at all depths in both fully exposed and covered stacks. However, uninhabited habitable conditions persisted in covered stacks after 1 month, demonstrating the importance of the hydrological cycle in the connection between inhabited habitats and uninhabited habitats. Low porosity rocks were found to retard the extent of colonization compared with higher porosity rocks. Examination of genomic DNA demonstrated that the habitats were colonized by a community dominated by Proteobacteria. Covered stacks had a higher abundance of fungal sequences among eukaryotic colonizers. These data demonstrate the tight coupling between the appearance of habitable conditions and life and the reasons for the rarity of uninhabited habitats on the present-day Earth. On other planetary bodies, such as Mars, with more inclement atmospheres and less vigorous hydrological cycles or a lack of life, uninhabited habitats could persist for longer with consequences for the interpretation of data sent back by planetary science missions.

Modern whole-organism genome analysis, in combination with biomass estimates, allows us to estimate a lower bound on the total information content in the biosphere. Given conservative estimates regarding DNA transcription rates, this information content suggests biosphere processing speeds exceeding yottaNOPS values (1024 Nucleotide Operations Per Second). Although prokaryotes evolved at least 3 billion years before plants and animals, we find that the information content of prokaryotes is similar to plants and animals at the present day. This information-based approach offers a new way to quantify anthropogenic and natural processes in the biosphere and its information diversity over time.