October 11, 2000

New York (October 11, 2000) - SPACE.com, the premiere space multimedia company, today announced a strategic media partnership with the SETI Institute, the leading scientific research organization conducting the world's most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In addition, SPACE.com has appointed Dr. Jill C. Tarter, director of the Institute's SETI programs and holder of the Institute's endowed Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI, to its advisory board.

SPACE.com and the SETI Institute will combine resources to create a new section on www.SPACE.com dedicated to SETI science. Debuting this fall, the "SETI Channel" will feature news and commentary about the ongoing search for alien life, as well as exclusive interactive features such as chats with SETI scientists and multimedia coverage of conferences and telescope observations. In addition, SPACE.com will host the SETI Institute Web site, and develop and host all official SETI Institute community activities including chats, message boards and a calendar of events. A preview of the SPACE.com SETI Channel can be found at http://www.space.com/searchforlife.

"We are delighted to announce our partnership with the SETI Institute to deliver the excitement of SETI science to a world-wide audience," said SPACE.com Chairman and CEO Lou Dobbs. "In the broad universe of space exploration, no activity generates as much interest as the search for life. And now there will be a direct connection between the public and those who actually look for extraterrestrial life."

"In addition to our SETI efforts, we also have a large group of scientists pondering the possibility of simple life nearby, as close as our own solar system," said SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson. "For instance, life may well exist on Mars or underneath the icy crust of Jupiter's moon, Europa. Our partnership with SPACE.com will give many people the opportunity to follow this work, and it will also help support our research."

From October 11 - 20, SPACE.com will showcase SETI Institute observations, in the most ambitious search ever for extraterrestrial life, at the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. SPACE.com and the SETI Institute will highlight the semi-annual Project Phoenix observations by featuring the daily journal of one of the Institute's Principal Scientists, Dr. Seth Shostak, and will provide exclusive live access to research center activities via Web cams, video and chats.

SPACE.com
SPACE.com is the first multimedia company dedicated to space and space related content and serving its audience on a wide variety of platforms. Anchored on the Web, the company has rapidly expanded across media with its print and software offerings. SPACE.com, the definitive space Web site, offers the richest and most compelling content, featuring news, information, education, entertainment, games, science fiction and a kids' channel. SPACE.com is also at the forefront of broadband content and technology, having launched the broadband channel Space TV on the Real.com Network. SPACE.com publishes SPACE Illustrated magazine which conveys the wonder of humankind's greatest adventure through spectacular space imagery and content, and Space Business International, the leading business to business international space publication. The company also publishes Starry Night, the country's leading software line for amateur astronomers. SPACE.com is headquartered in New York City with offices and news bureaus in Washington D.C.; Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Houston, Texas; Pasadena, Calif.; Cary, N.C.; Toronto, Canada; London, UK and Tokyo, Japan.

SETI Institute
The SETI Institute, located in Mountain View, Calif., is a non-profit organization that was founded 16 years ago to pursue research and education efforts related to the search for life off of Earth. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Institute was a major participant in NASA's search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) project. The cancellation of the NASA program by congressional action in 1993 transformed the Institute's search from one that was taxpayer supported to one that is now funded by private donors. The organization serves as an institutional home for scientific and educational projects relevant to the nature, distribution, and prevalence of life in the universe. The Institute conducts and/or encourages research and related activities in a large number of fields including, but not limited to, all science and technology aspects of astronomy and the planetary sciences, chemical evolution, the origin of life, biological evolution, and cultural evolution. The Institute also has a primary goal to conduct and encourage public information and education related to these topics, and has over three dozen different grants and cooperative agreements supporting a wide variety of projects in these fields. The Institute recently received pledges totaling $12.5 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold for the first phase of a new telescope for SETI research, to be known as the Allen Telescope Array. The project is being undertaken together with radio astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley.

CONTACT:

SPACE.com
Toni DiMartino
212/703-5828
tdimartino@hq.space.com

SETI Institute
Karen Randall
Director of Special Projects
650-960-4537
krandall@seti.org