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Carnegie Institution
News
For Immediate Release
September 9, 2004
Contact Dr. Andrew Steele, at 202-478-8974, email a.steele@gl.ciw.edu;
Dr. Jake Maule, at 202-478-8989, j.maule@gl.ciw.edu; Dr. Hans Amundsen
at 0047 90043976, email h.e.f.amundsen@fys.uio.no; or Dr. Pamela Conrad,
818-354-2114, conrad@jpl.nasa.gov
IMAGES available at http://homepage.mac.com/steelie/PhotoAlbum13.html
Major milestone for detecting life on Mars
Washington, D.C. “To detect life on Mars, we have to devise instruments
to recognize it and design them in such a way to get them to the Red Planet
most efficiently,” said Dr. Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution’s
Geophysical Laboratory, a member of an international team* designing devices
and techniques to find life on Mars. “We’ve passed a major
milestone. We successfully tested an integrated Mars life-detection strategy
for the first time and showed that if life on Mars resembles life on Earth
at all, we’ll be able to find even a single-cell,” he remarked.
Steele is part of the interdisciplinary, international Arctic Mars Analogue
Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) team, which is creating a sampling and analysis
strategy that could be used for future Mars missions where real-time decision-making
on the planet surface will be needed to search for signs of life. Their
two-stage strategy involves an initial analysis of the surface to find
good target sites and then subsequent collection and analysis protocols
to study the samples.
Because its geology is much like Mars, this year’s AMASE team just
completed a two-week fieldwork expedition in the challenging environment
of Bockfjorden on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, which at close to
80o N has the world’s northern-most hot springs above sea level.
The AMASE team, led by Dr. Hans Amundsen of Physics of Geological Processes
(PGP), University of Oslo, Norway, deployed a suite of life-detection
instruments in the frigid Arctic environment, including two spectroscopic
instruments deployed by Dr. Pamela Conrad (of JPL and a Carnegie visiting
investigator), and Dr. Arthur Lane (of JPL). The instruments are highly
sensitive to certain organic and mineralogical markers, or fingerprints,
and have the capacity to identify local “hot spots,” which
are likely to be good targets for finding life. These instruments were
tested on hot-spring deposited carbonate terraces containing rock-dwelling
(endolithic) bacteria, and within lava conduits on the Sverrefjell volcano.
This volcano is currently the nearest terrestrial analogue to the processes
that produced features (Carbonate rosettes) that have been found in the
Martian meteorite ALH84001.
The Carnegie team** led by Dr. Steele, deployed a suite of specially adapted
off-the-shelf instruments to rapidly detect and characterize low levels
of microbiota. The results of the tests can be used for independent validation,
and to cross check among the instruments for greater information than
any instrument can yield on its own. Field analysis also allows real-time
understanding of the environment, thus permitting the scientists to gather
pertinent samples and test hypothesis with minimal sample disturbance.
The suite of instruments included standard genetic techniques to identify
and characterize bacterial populations (Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR);
a highly sensitive instrument to detect cell wall components (a PTS unit,
which was developed by Charles River, and Norm Wainwright of MBL); an
instrument to measure cellular activity by analyzing the flux of the energy-storing
molecule ATP; and most significantly, protein microarrays.
Protein microarrays are capable of testing for the presence of many hundreds
or even thousands of molecules simultaneously. These molecules are not
limited to large proteins or cells—smaller molecules i.e., amino
acids and nucleotides, the building blocks of life on Earth, can also
be found. The Carnegie team has pioneered the use of this technology,
principally for life-detection for Mars missions, and has recently been
advocating its use in astronaut health and environmental monitoring for
long-duration human space flight. “This expedition marks the first
time these arrays have been used in the field,” commented Dr. Jake
Maule of Carnegie, who was responsible for this aspect of the research.
Initial results indicate that the team was able to maintain sterile conditions
and that the positive results from the protein arrays correlate with PCR,
PTS and ATP analysis, as well as the spectroscopic techniques deployed
by JPL.
Samples are currently being tested further in the Carnegie labs to verify
the field data, and additional expeditions are planned to refine the strategy,
technology, and remote operation over the next three years.
The long-term aim of the project is to fully characterize the geology
and biology of the Bockfjorden area, to understand the role of biology
in the formation and weathering of carbonate deposits that are the only
known terrestrial analogue to those found in Martian meteorites. This
project will also allow verification of sample acquisition and analysis
in simulations at Svalbard, and future missions to Mars and Europa.
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*The AMASE Team comes from the following institutions: Physics of Geological
Processes, University of Oslo, Norway; The Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Geophysical Laboratory; the University of Leeds; Universidad de Burgos,
Spain; GEMOC, Macquarie University, Australia; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory;
LPI – Lunar and Planetary Institute; and Penn State University.
The expedition photographer was Kjell Ove Storvik.
**Dr. Andrew Steele, Dr. Marilyn Fogel, Maia Schweitzer, Dr. Jake Maule,
and Dr. Jan Toporski
Funding for this project was provided by the Carnegie Institution, with
additional support from NASA AStep, JPL/ and the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
The Carnegie Institution of Washington (www.CarnegieInstitution.org) has
been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is
a private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout
the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental
biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary
science.
The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) is a distributed national organization
for research and training, which explores questions about the origin,
evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. The institute
is composed of 16 teams involving more than 500 scientists, educators,
and students. It extends across the United States from Hawaii to Massachusetts.
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