Closing gaps to our origins. The UV window into the Universe
  The investigation of the emergence of life is a major endeavour of science.
Astronomy is contributing to it in three fundamental manners: (1) by measuring
the chemical enrichment of the Universe, (2) by investigating planet formation
and searching for exoplanets with signatures of life and, (3) by determining
the abundance of aminoacids and the chemical routes to aminoacid and protein
growth in astronomical bodies. This proposal deals with the first two. In the
Voyage to 2050, the world-wide scientific community is getting equipped with
large facilities for the investigation of the emergence of life in the Universe
(i.e. VLT, JWST, ELT, GMT, TMT, ALMA, FAST, VLA, ATHENA, SKA) including the
ESA's CHEOPS, PLATO and ARIEL missions. This white paper is a community effort
to call for the development of a large ultraviolet optical observatory to
gather fundamental data for this investigation that will not be accessible
through other ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. A versatile space
observatory with UV sensitivity a factor of 50-100 greater than existing
facilities will revolutionize our understanding of the pathway to life in the
Universe.
