Testing for life on Mars
AUT University helps out NASA as it prepares for a 2020 mission to the red planet.
A team from AUT University is helping NASA determine whether there is life on Mars – but instead of a trip to Mars, the New Zealand research mission demands high-tech analysis of soil samples from a Chilean desert.
AUT is helping NASA with the search for extra-terrestrial life and the next mission to Mars. Using a new high-throughput DNA sequencing machine, AUT’s Institute for Applied Ecology New Zealand is analysing soil samples taken from Chile’s Atacama Desert by a prototype of the rover which will go to Mars in 2020.
The prototype was fitted with a newly developed drill and traversed 50 kilometres of terrain between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, collecting soil in an environment analogous to that of Mars’ surface. The samples were sent to AUT to be tested for signs of microbial life.
Institute Director Professor Steve Pointing says AUT’s role is to help NASA understand whether microbial life is detectable in those drill samples.
“Subquestions of this are: what’s the minimum number of microbial cells we need to get a positive result? Is it possible to get a false positive, so is it possible to get a sign of life when it’s not actually there? If there is anything there, how do we tell if it’s alive?”
The results will be published by NASA and will help its decision on whether it should use the new drill technology or go with something else.
Professor Pointing also spoke about the project, Life in the Atacama, and the possibility of life on Mars in his inaugural professorial address earlier this year.
“This Mars rover will be one of the first machines primarily aimed at looking for signatures of past life. Previous missions involved orbiters, and several highly successful surface rovers that were concerned with identifying geology, climate and water. NASA found that in the not too distant past, perhaps as recently as five million years ago, there was liquid water, and this is a pre-requisite for life to occur.
“Our Earth has supported life for over 3.5 billion years so it is quite conceivable that there were once two planets in our solar system that had life on them. This leads to questions of whether there was any transference of material between them. Did organic material find its way from Mars to Earth leading to life on this planet? Are we Martian in origin?
“Looking for life is extremely difficult because we don’t know what we’re looking for. With the Life in the Atacama project we are trying to find a sensible approach to the search for life on another planet. Ultimately it might not even be DNA based, so is DNA-based sequencing a sensible approach”
As well as the institute’s work with NASA, Professor Pointing’s address looked at the wider questions of: where did life on Earth come from? Is life common throughout the universe? And what is the future of life?
“Life on Earth is diverse, how do we explain that? There is life on Earth but what about the rest of the universe? How do we look for it and which planets would support it? And then what lies in the future; what will happen to humanity? Our solar system will eventually die so if we have to live somewhere else, where would we go and how would we do it? We could build colonies on space ships, but perhaps another way to do it is to genetically engineer ourselves to fit the environments of other planets so, for example, we could breathe other gases, have multiple arms or legs, be bigger or smaller.”
Professor Pointing also touched on evolutionary science and religious faith, saying that he believes the concept of evolution and faith no longer have to be viewed as non-compatible.
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Testing for life on Mars
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