Are researchers searching in the wrong locations on Mars to find ancient life? This is what a recent study published in Astrobiology hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated searching in ice or permafrost instead of Martian regolith for signs of ancient life. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand where to look for ancient life on Mars while influencing future missions to the Red Planet.
For the study, the researchers conducted a series of laboratory experiments where they subjected amino acids from dead microorganisms within water-ice to high amounts of gamma radiation designed to mimic exposure to solar and cosmic radiation on the surface of Mars. This is because Mars lacks a protective magnetic field and ozone like Earth, so its surface is constantly bombarded with deadly levels of space radiation that could sterilize life on the surface. In the end, the researchers found that amino acids within surface water-ice on Mars could survive for up to 50 million years.
“Fifty million years is far greater than the expected age for some current surface ice deposits on Mars, which are often less than two million years old, meaning any organic life present within the ice would be preserved,” said Dr. Christopher House, who is a professor of geosciences at Penn State University and a co-author on the study. “That means if there are bacteria near the surface of Mars, future missions can find it.”
While the amounts of amino acids that survived 50 million years was more than 10 percent, this study underscores the importance of searching all locations on Mars for evidence of ancient life. This comes as the two NASA Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, continue searching for signs of ancient life on Mars within regolith (often misstated as “soil”). However, if future missions could search for ancient life in surface ice, this could open doors to new ways of searching for ancient life on other worlds, too.
What new insights into finding ancient life on Mars will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Astrobiology, EurekAlert!
Featured Image: The north polar ice cap of Mars. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
