[7][8][9] The term "astroecology" was first applied in the context of performing studies in actual meteorites to evaluate their potential resources favorable to sustaining life.
[1] Early results showed that meteorite/asteroid materials can support microorganisms, algae and plant cultures under Earth's atmosphere and supplemented with water.
Several observations suggest that diverse planetary materials, similar to meteorites collected on Earth, could be used as agricultural soils, as they provide nutrients to support microscopic life when supplemented with water and an atmosphere.
[1] Experimental astroecology has been proposed to rate planetary materials as targets for astrobiology exploration and as potential biological in-situ resources.
The results suggest that carbonaceous asteroids and Martian basalts can serve as potential future resources for substantial biological populations in the Solar System.
[1] Analysis of the essential nutrients (C, N, P, K) in meteorites yielded information for calculating the amount of biomass that can be constructed from asteroid resources.
The resources, and the potential time-integrated biomass were estimated for planetary systems, for habitable zones around stars, and for the galaxy and the universe.
[2][3] Such astroecology calculations suggest that the limiting elements nitrogen and phosphorus in the estimated 1022 kg carbonaceous asteroids could support 6·1020 kg biomass for the expected five billion future years of the Sun, yielding a future time-integrated BIOTA (BIOTA, Biomass Integrated Over Times Available, measured in kilogram-years) of 3·1030 kg-years in the Solar System,[1][2][3] a hundred thousand times more than life on Earth to date.
[2] Such astroecology considerations quantify the immense potentials of future life in space, with commensurate biodiversity and possibly, intelligence.
[2][3] Chemical analysis of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites show that they contain extractable bioavailable water, organic carbon, and essential phosphate, nitrate and potassium nutrients.
[1][18] Laboratory experiments showed that material from the Murchison meteorite, when ground into a fine powder and combined with Earth's water and air, can provide the nutrients to support a variety of organisms including bacteria (Nocardia asteroides), algae, and plant cultures such as potato and asparagus.
An issue that arises is whether we should build immense amounts of life that decays fast, or smaller, but still large, populations that last longer.
The astroecology results above suggest that humans can expand life in the galaxy through space travel or directed panspermia.
These projections are based on information about 15 billion past years since the Big Bang, but the habitable future is much longer, spanning trillions of eons.
Therefore, physics, astroeclogy resources, and some cosmological scenarios may allow organized life to last, albeit at an ever slowing rate, indefinitely.