Political Support

In the United States, President George W. Bush's Fiscal Year 2007 NASA Budget cut funding for astrobiological research by 50 percent.[53] In the 2007 plan, $89 million will be cut from astrobiological research, partly because of a $2.3 billion error in the Space Shuttle Budget.[54] In a letter to the astrobiological community in the United States, SETI chief executive Thomas Pierson and former NAI director Baruch Blumberg said the following: "Action is needed immediately to prevent the slowing down, or even cessation, of astrobiological research".[54] Hiroshi Ohmoto, the director of the Astrobiology Research Center in Penn State, said the following in response to the budget cuts to astrobiology:[54]

Astrobiology is the reason we go into space, to answer fundamental questions about the origins of life and how it evolved, and whether there are other places where organisms are living. It is the whole justification for future space missions.