[meteorite-list] NASA comes up short in search for life in Chilean desert

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:16:36 2004
Message-ID: <20030825212614.66965.qmail_at_web80512.mail.yahoo.com>

Although this could be considered "Off-topic",
I just thought you would like to know how NASA spent
all of that money it "saved" when it decided to halt
funding that was formerly used by universities to
classify non-Antarctic meteorite finds:

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http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/nw_national/article/0,1891,TRN_5703_2162843,00.html

NASA comes up short in search for life in Chilean
desert

By BYRON SPICE
Time Record News
August 6, 2003

The Atacama Desert of northern Chile may be the
world's driest desert, but areas of it nevertheless
teem with life.
So why can't NASA scientists find life there?

True, a NASA-funded team of scientists who
participated in an Atacama field experiment in April
found plenty. They were pestered by flies, marveled at
the variety of lichens growing on and under rocks and
watched as vultures circled overhead, a sure
indication that mice skittered nearby.

But counterparts at the space agency's Ames Research
Center in Moffett Field, Calif., poring over photos
and instrument data transmitted from the field
scientists, never found anything they considered proof
of life.

For this team of NASA and academic researchers,
assigned to develop robotic technology for finding
life on Mars, those results might seem unsettling. If
they can't detect life known to exist 5,000 miles away
in the Atacama, how could they hope to determine if
life exists on an alien planet 35 million miles away?

The researchers, who gathered at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh last week for a three-day
workshop, nevertheless were pleased to discover that
what they were able to discern about the geology of
the desert by remote sensing had closely matched what
scientists on the ground observed.

The results were encouraging, considering this was the
first field experiment in what will be a three-year
project, said Nathalie Cabrol, a planetary scientist
at
Ames and lead scientist of the Life in the Atacama
Project. William Whittaker of CMU's Robotics Institute
is the project's principal investigator.

But a host of issues remain for the dozens of
researchers who are building the robot and the
life-sensing instruments, which must eventually mesh
to become a machine capable of scientific exploration.

"If I see a bush in front of my rover, there's not too
much to discuss," Cabrol said.
But if life is sparse, more subtle or resembles
nonliving features, how do researchers pick out the
signature of life? What features might prove something
is living? What combination of sensors is needed to
detect that signature?

With two robotic rovers now hurtling toward Mars to
search for signs of water, the development of
life-sensing robots gains greater urgency in the
planetary
community. If Mars Exploration Rovers are successful
in their quest when they land on the Red Planet in
January, the logical follow-up mission would be a
search for life.

"Mars is a dynamic planet, a water-enriched planet,"
said James Dohm, a planetary geologist at the
University of Arizona who has spent years mapping it.
Growing evidence that it is geologically active, with
subsurface magma, suggests that water may not only be
present as ice, but also as groundwater. And the
combination of magma and water greatly enhances the
prospects for finding life, he contended.

But no one knows how to prove life exists by remote
sensing. And, as this year's Atacama field experiment
underscored, even the human eye can be tricked in
extreme environments.

Searching along the edges of the Salar Grande, an
evaporated salt lake, the researchers came across
numerous rocks covered by lichens - leaflike, crusty
or
stalklike organisms that are combinations of fungi and
algae. But not everything was as it appeared, said
Alan Waggoner, director of CMU's Molecular Biosensor
and Imaging Center.

Some of the rocks appeared to be covered with bumpy,
green lichens, he noted. But when field researchers
scratched beneath the surface, they discovered salt.
The lifelike bumps were simply salt that, through
evaporation, had effloresced to form puffy mounds. The
green outer layer turned out to be oxidized copper,
which at some point had blown on top of the salt and
been incorporated into it.

It will be months before NASA's latest robotic
explorers reach Mars, but earthbound observers can get
what should be the best view of the Red Planet in
about 60,000 years at the end of this month, when
Earth and Mars pass within 35 million miles of each
other.
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Received on Mon 25 Aug 2003 05:26:14 PM PDT