Experts conduct thorough studies on it

Jan 22, 2010 09:31 GMT  ·  By

Until space agencies will be able to develop the necessary technology to put people in a permanent outpost on the Red Planet, scientists have no chance of analyzing the Martian environment first-hand. Undoubtedly, if one were to investigate the rocks, river beds, deltas and craters on our neighboring planet, many of its mysteries would be revealed, but rovers, landers and orbiters cannot send too much information about the most interesting aspects of Mars. So, for now, researchers stick to analyzing the analogues of the first Martian environments, right here on Earth.

Billions of years ago, the Red Planet looked a lot different than it does today. It featured long rivers flowing towards a number of craters, lakes and deltas that were formed as sediments conglomerated near a river's mouth. These ancient lakes, which have long since dried and gone underground as ice sheets, might have analogues on our planet, researchers hypothesized some time ago. One such environment was identified a few years ago in Western Australia, where experts just finished conducting the first microbiological survey of Mars' analog lakes. The work was to determine if complex organisms could possibly survive on the Red Planet.

“From the data that is coming back, it seems that there are portions of Mars that probably had acidic, saline waters. If there ever was life on Mars, that life would have to have the mechanisms that would thrive in hypersaline environments,” Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST) Department of Biological Sciences expert Melanie Mormile explains. She is also the lead author of a new paper detailing the finds, which appears in a recent issue of the renowned scientific journal Astrobiology. Other Mars analogue studies are currently being conducted by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute experts in Bolivia and Chile. NASA and the Canadian space agency CSA are also conducting their own investigation in British Columbia, Canada, through the Pavilion Lake Research Project.

“Analog studies of any sort are really the key and useful for getting fundamental information about the capabilities of life. Earth is the best study we have at the moment, the most accessible study,” McMaster University expert and Pavilion Lake Project scientist Allyson Brady adds. She shares that most such studies have been focused until now on lakes with an alkaline, or basic, pH, and that this makes Mormile's new study of highly acidic lakes unique. The MUST expert analyzed more than 11 lakes during the winter of 2005, and collected samples from each of them. Then, the team extracted DNA from each of the samples, and looked at the variety of organisms that lived within the waters.

“If you actually get samples from Mars, how would you know what to look for? What kinds of evidence would you look for that showed there was life in the past? These analog studies give us some fundamental information to address those questions,” Brady asks. A Mars sample-return mission is currently scheduled for around 2020, so the question needs to be answered fairly soon, Space reports.