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Project Progress

In 2017, our labs were hives of activity around the analysis of samples collected during the November 2016 expedition in the Chilean Atacama desert, Altiplano, and Andes. Efforts focused on coordinating, cataloguing, describing, distributing, tracking and analyzing samples from the NAI 2016 field season in order to ensure integrated analysis and interpretation, e.g., for mineralogy, microscopy, and genetics (Warren-Rhodes, lead). Protocols were established for laboratory-based analysis of organics in field samples; selection/study of first set of El Tatio silica sinter samples and the launch of our team’s correlative analysis of these samples. Round robin experiments were initiated to establish limits of detection/limits of quantitation for mission-relevant instruments within our NAI team and with external collaborators. At microscale, this effort was led by Co-I Cady. In situ experiments linking orbital to surface data in terrestrial analogs provided the first quantification of the requirements for the integrated detection/identification of habitats (cm-scale). This effort started in 2017 will be continued in 2018, and is spearheaded by Co-Is Moersch and Wettergreen Coordinated lab investigations are being used to characterize the individual and combined role played by water, minerals and soil matrices, UV, and cosmic rays on organic preservation potential. The synthesis of Fe-Si oxide solids in support of team efforts to characterize short-range-order solids and experiments on the degradation products of organic compounds exposed to radiation in the presence of these materials is underway. Photochemistry experiments in Yellowstone hot springs combined with laboratory studies are unraveling the relationship between mineral precipitates and microbial cells in the context of UV exposure and reactive oxygen production rates (Hinman, lead).