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The Astrophysical Context of Life
What are the effects of bombardment?
What role does bombardment play in the origin of life on Earth or elsewhere?
Did life emerge during the heavy bombardment of the Hadean era?
How do rocky planets get wet?
What are the frequency and effect of subsequent bombardments?
What is the biological role of radiation?
What fraction of mutations are due to copy errors, to influences from within the biosphere, and to external astronomical sources?
Is the level of mutations a selected biological phenotype?
To what degree and under what conditions is chiral asymmetry, and possibly homochirality, induced by radiation?
What is the evolutionary origin of radiation repair mechanisms and what commonality is there between these mechanisms, gene transfer, and meiois, all of which involve annealing strands of DNA?
Is photosynthesis a requirement for a highly developed biosphere?
What programmatic activities at NASA and other agencies can be developed to detect/confirm/ verify factors relevant to the topics outlined above?
Are there in vitro or in silico experiments that can inform these issues outlined above?
How do current and proposed NASA missions support prospects for the remote sensing of the geology, climate, weather, chemistry, and biology of planets around other stars?
What additional missions can be developed to address these issues?
