Did life ever exist on Mars?

Credit: Simone Marchi/SwRI. Credit: Michael Carroll

Early Earth

Early Mars

Mars evolved. Did martian life evolve too?Where might microorganisms be living today?

Earth today

Mars today

Credit: http://mars.nasa.gov

Life on Earth adapts to extreme conditions

There is more to the Red Planet than meets the eye!

NASA/CalTech/MSSS

NASA JPL / Corby Waste

MSL rover

European Space Agency

ExoMars rover

Future?

Life detection on future Mars missions

1. Intrinsic science interest. Is there, or was there life on Mars? It is a second genesis?

2. Astronaut health and safety. Required evidence and testing may be higher than for science interest alone.

3. Safe Earth return. Mandated by planetary protection for return of both astronauts and samples to Earth.

Life detection technologies

• Unlike Viking (40 years ago), not based on detecting metabolism or growth

• Focused on detection of biomolecules and patterns of molecules specific to life, for example:- set of homochiral amino acids - patterns in lipids.

• Instruments are ready to go. The biggest challenge is sample collection and processing.

• Where will we go?

Lower-limit of Water Mass Fraction on Mars(in the top meter)

2003 Neutron Map of Mars, Credit: Mars Odyssey, GRS Team, LANL, NASA

What are the origins, distribution, and future of life in the universe?

Don’t Mess it up Before You Find Out!

Planetary Protection

The business of:

- Protecting solar system objects from harmful contamination

resulting from the activities of interplanetary spacecraft

- Making sure we get the right answers from the science experiments we

perform

- Making sure we don’t make these places unusable for the future

- Protecting the Earth from uncontrolled exposure to an extra-

terrestrial organism from returned extra-terrestrial samples.

There is international agreement that all countries should follow policy for planetary protection

How do we do that?

• Isolation of a cleaned item (e.g., spacecraft) from a less clean environment (e.g., launch vehicle fairing) by an enclosure or “biobarrier”.

• Technologies used every day in the medical industry.

• Also important for cleanliness preservation during e.g., storage prior to integration, transportation between cleanrooms and/or test facilities

• Can be flight (deployable) or non-flight (temporary/ disposable) items.

• Can also be remotely cleaned at point-of-use.

What do we actually do when we do that?

Get the spacecraft hardwarereally clean…

Keep it really clean… Sterilize it to get rid of terrestrial microorganisms…

Use a method to protect the clean tools…

Fly an in-situ re-cleaning capability…

All to ensure we get the RIGHT ANSWER!

Current (2017) planetary-prototype drill

Delivered by Honeybee on 11/16/16 to NASA-Ames

Survivable +70/-233C

2m depth from rover

Feb 2017 tests: drill and arm on K-REX2 rover

2017 Atacama sampling with rover drill

Combining a Laboratory Lander with a Prospecting Rover?

Someday... Humans Drilling for Ice?

Can you drink Mars water?

● Many possible contaminants - heavy metals, acids, Mars biology!● Environmental systems on ISS already recycle urine● Technologies for water purification are well known

○ Filtering○ Reverse Osmosis○ Ion Exchange○ Biological Treatment (Earth microbes)○ Disinfection (UV, ozone, chlorination)

● Characterizing martian melt water in robotic mission will help optimize future water purification techniques

Imagine… Humans in a lab at Mars studying ancient and modern ecology!

Automated spectral mapping of drill core

Sample acquired from core for detailed tests

Sample biologyhere