NASA's Perseverance and ESA's Rosalind Franklin rovers have the scientific goal of searching for evidence of ancient life on Mars. Geochemical biosignatures that form because of microbe-mineral interactions could play a key role in achieving this, as they can be preserved for millions of years on Earth, and the same could be true for Mars. Previous laboratory experiments have explored the formation of biosignatures under closed systems, but these do not represent the open systems that are found in natural martian environments, such as channels and lakes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWater present on early Mars is often assumed to have been habitable. In this study, experiments were performed to investigate the habitability of well-defined putative martian fluids and to identify the accompanying potential formation of biosignatures. Simulated martian environments were developed by combining martian fluid and regolith simulants based on the chemistry of the Rocknest sand shadow at Gale Crater.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe waters that were present on early Mars may have been habitable. Characterising environments analogous to these waters and investigating the viability of their microbes under simulated martian chemical conditions is key to developing hypotheses on this habitability and potential biosignature formation. In this study, we examined the viability of microbes from the Anderton Brine Springs (United Kingdom) under simulated martian chemistries designed to simulate the chemical conditions of water that may have existed during the Hesperian.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe detection of potential biosignatures with mineral matrices is part of a multifaceted approach in the search for life on other planetary bodies. The 2020 ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover includes within its payload three IR spectrometers in the form of ISEM (Infrared Spectrometer for ExoMars), MicrOmega, and Ma-MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies). The use of this technique in the detection and characterization of biosignatures is of great value.
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