Finding Life in Mars Analog Sites on Earth

October 5, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Andrew Steel of the NAI Carnegie Team and other scientists have recently tested life-detection instruments designed for Mars at the Arctic Mars Analog site in a Norwegian volcano. In a press release, Hans Amundsen of the University of Oslo said “The instruments detected both living and fossilized organisms, which is the kind of evidence we’d be searching for on the Red Planet.” One instrument, designed by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), detected “minute quantities of aromatic hydrocarbons from microorganisms and lichens present in the rocks and ice,” said JPL researcher Arthur Lonne Lane. One goal of the program was to find out if the instruments could be kept sterile, so that they would actually detect life in the volcano rather than fool researchers by detecting life from aboveground that only appeared to have come from below.

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