Seven research teams were recently awarded nearly $50 million by NASA over five years to study the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe, as part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)’s work at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

“With Mars 2020 on the horizon, these research teams will provide the critical interdisciplinary expertise to help interpret data from future astrobiology-focused missions,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, according to Auto World News.

NASA reports that the research teams are winners of the CAN7 competition and include the following: (1) the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, CA; (2) NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA; (3) the University of California, Riverside; (4) NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA; (5) NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD; (6) the University of Montana, Missoula; and (7) the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“The intellectual scope of astrobiology is vast, from understanding how our planet went from lifeless to living, to understanding how life has adapted to Earth’s harshest environments, to exploring other worlds with the most advanced technologies to search for signs of life,” said Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s astrobiology program, according to CBS San Francisco. “The new teams cover that breadth of astrobiology, and by coming together in the NAI, they will make the connections between disciplines and organizations that stimulate fundamental scientific advances.”

According to NASA, some tasks and focuses for the teams include: conducting investigations to support future Mars exploration; studying the habitability of icy worlds such as Europa, Ganymede, and Enecladus; answering questions of how Earth remained habitable for most of its 4.5 billion year history; investigating the history of organic material in space; and examining the chemical energy that becomes available to living systems through interactions of rocks and water.

These teams will work alongside the current researchers of the NAI, including those of the University of Washington, Seattle; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.