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MIT’s MOXIE experiment reliably produces oxygen on Mars

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On the red and dusty surface of Mars, nearly 100 million miles from Earth, an instrument the size of a lunchbox is proving it can reliably do the work of a small tree.  

The MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, has been successfully making oxygen from the Red Planet’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere since April 2021 , about two months after it touched down on the Martian surface as part of NASA’s Perseverance rover and Mars 2020 mission.

In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, researchers report that, by the end of 2021, MOXIE was able to produce oxygen on seven experimental runs, in a variety of atmospheric conditions, including during the day and night, and through different Martian seasons. In each run, the instrument reached its target of producing six grams of oxygen per hour — about the rate of a modest tree on Earth.

Researchers envision that a scaled-up version of MOXIE could be sent to Mars ahead of a human mission, to continuously produce oxygen at the rate of several hundred trees. At that capacity, the system should generate enough oxygen to both sustain humans once they arrive, and fuel a rocket for returning astronauts back to Earth.

So far, MOXIE’s steady output is a promising first step toward that goal.

“We have learned a tremendous amount that will inform future systems at a larger scale,” says Michael Hecht, principal investigator of the MOXIE mission at MIT’s Haystack Observatory.

MOXIE’s oxygen production on Mars also represents the first demonstration of “in-situ resource utilization,” which is the idea of harvesting and using a planet’s materials (in this case, carbon dioxide on Mars) to make resources (such as oxygen) that would otherwise have to be transported from Earth.

“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body, and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” says MOXIE deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor of the practice in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “It’s historic in that sense.”

Hoffman and Hecht’s MIT co-authors include MOXIE team members Jason SooHoo, Andrew Liu, Eric Hinterman, Maya Nasr, Shravan Hariharan, Kyle Horn, and Parker Steen, along with collaborators from multiple institutions including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which managed MOXIE’s development, flight software, packaging, and testing prior to launch.  

Seasonal air

The current version of MOXIE is small by design, in order to fit aboard the Perseverance rover, and is built to run for short periods, starting up and shutting down with each run, depending on the rover’s exploration schedule and mission responsibilities. In contrast, a full-scale oxygen factory would include larger units that would ideally run continuously.

Despite the necessary compromises in MOXIE’s current design, the instrument has shown it can reliably and efficiently convert Mars’ atmosphere into pure oxygen. It does so by first drawing the Martian air in through a filter that cleans it of contaminants. The air is then pressurized, and sent through the Solid OXide Electrolyzer (SOXE), an instrument developed and built by OxEon Energy, that electrochemically splits the carbon dioxide-rich air into oxygen ions and carbon monoxide.

The oxygen ions are then isolated and recombined to form breathable, molecular oxygen, or O 2 , which MOXIE then measures for quantity and purity before releasing it harmlessly back into the air, along with carbon monoxide and other atmospheric gases.

Since the rover’s landing in February 2021, MOXIE engineers have started up the instrument seven times throughout the Martian year, each time taking a few hours to warm up, then another hour to make oxygen before powering back down. Each run was scheduled for a different time of day or night, and in different seasons, to see whether MOXIE could accommodate shifts in the planet’s atmospheric conditions.

“The atmosphere of Mars is far more variable than Earth,” Hoffman notes. “The density of the air can vary by a factor of two through the year, and the temperature can vary by 100 degrees. One objective is to show we can run in all seasons.”

So far, MOXIE has shown that it can make oxygen at almost any time of the Martian day and year.

“The only thing we have not demonstrated is running at dawn or dusk, when the temperature is changing substantially,” Hecht says. “We do have an ace up our sleeve that will let us do that, and once we test that in the lab, we can reach that last milestone to show we can really run any time.”

Ahead of the game

As MOXIE continues to churn out oxygen on Mars, engineers plan to push its capacity, and increase its production, particularly in the Martian spring, when atmospheric density and carbon dioxide levels are high.

“The next run coming up will be during the highest density of the year, and we just want to make as much oxygen as we can,” Hecht says. “So we’ll set everything as high as we dare, and let it run as long as we can.”

They will also monitor the system for signs of wear and tear. As MOXIE is just one experiment among several aboard the Perseverance rover, it cannot run continuously as a full-scale system would. Instead, the instrument must start up and shut down with each run — a thermal stress that can degrade the system over time.

If MOXIE can operate successfully despite repeatedly turning on and off, this would suggest that a full-scale system, designed to run continuously, could do so for thousands of hours.

“To support a human mission to Mars, we have to bring a lot of stuff from Earth, like computers, spacesuits, and habitats,” Hoffman says. “But dumb old oxygen? If you can make it there, go for it — you’re way ahead of the game.”

This research was supported, in part, by NASA.

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Press mentions, time magazine.

A number of MIT spinouts and research projects – including the MOXIE instrument that successfully generated oxygen on Mars, a new solar-powered desalination system and MIT spinout SurgiBox – were featured on TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023 list.

USA Today reporter Zoe Wells spotlights the Mars MOXIE device developed by MIT researchers, which “has already made 122 grams of oxygen, comparable to 10 hours of breathable air for a small dog. MOXIE produced 12 grams of oxygen per hour at 98% purity, which exceeded NASA's original expectations.”

The Washington Post

Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma highlights how MIT researchers have demonstrated that the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) can convert carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen on Mars. “It’s what explorers have done since time immemorial,” explains Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman. “Find out what resources are available where you’re going to and find out how to use them.”

The Boston Globe

MIT researchers have used the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) to successfully generate oxygen on Mars, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe . “This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planetary body and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” says Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman. “It’s historic in that sense.”

New Scientist

During day and night, in the wake of a dust storm and in extreme temperatures, the MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) was able to generate about 100 minutes of breathable oxygen in 2021 on Mars, reports Jacklin Kawn for New Scientist . “At the highest level, this is just a brilliant success,” said Michael Hecht, principal investigator of the MOXIE mission at MIT’s Haystack Observatory.

The MIT MOXIE experiment, which traveled to Mars aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, has been able to create oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, reports Sarah Wells for Vice. “This experiment is also the first to successfully harvest and use resources on any planetary body, a process that will be important not only for Martian exploration but future lunar habitats as well,” writes Wells.

Bloomberg News reporter Martine Paris writes that the MIT MOXIE experiment has been converting carbon dioxide from the Martian environment into oxygen since the Perseverance rover landed on Mars. “Seven times last year, throughout the Martian seasons, Moxie was able to produce about six grams (0.2 ounces) of oxygen per hour,” writes Paris.

The Guardian

MIT researchers’ Mars Oxygen in-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) has been successfully generating breathable oxygen on Mars, reports The Guardian . “It is hoped that at full capacity the system could generate enough oxygen to sustain humans once they arrive on Mars, and fuel a rocket to return humans to Earth,” writes The Guardian .

CNN reporters Katie Hunt and Ashley Strickland spotlight how the MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) has been successfully generating oxygen on Mars during seven experimental test runs in a variety of atmospheric conditions. “A scaled up MOXIE would include larger units that could run continuously and potentially be sent to Mars ahead of a human mission to produce oxygen at the rate of several hundred trees,” they write. “This would allow the generation -- and storage -- of enough oxygen to both sustain humans once they arrive and fuel a rocket for returning astronauts back to Earth.”

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Science News

Nasa’s perseverance rover finds its first possible hint of ancient life on mars.

The discovery builds the case for bringing pieces of Mars back to Earth for future study

Perseverance examined this Mars rock on July 21. The leopard spot–like features speckling the clay-colored part of the rock resemble structures in Earth rocks that are associated with life.

MSSS/JPL-Caltech/NASA

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By Lisa Grossman

July 25, 2024 at 7:52 pm

NASA’s Perseverance rover has bagged its first hint of ancient microbes on Mars.

“We’re not able to say that this is a sign of life,” says Perseverance deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif.  “But this is the most compelling sample we’ve found yet.”

The rover drilled up the sample on July 21 from a reddish rock, dubbed Cheyava Falls after a feature at the Grand Canyon. It is the first piece of Mars that Perseverance has examined that contains organic molecules, the building blocks of life, project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech reported July 25 at the 10th International Conference on Mars in Pasadena.

This isn’t the first sign of organics on Mars — the Curiosity rover detected organic molecules in a region called Gale Crater in 2014 (SN: 12/16/14) . But scientists have struggled to identify organics since Perseverance landed in an ancient dried-up lake called Jezero Crater in 2021 , says Stack Morgan ( SN: 2/17/21 ).

Adding to the excitement, the reddish rock is speckled with little white spots with black rims. “They look like a tricolored leopard spot,” Stack Morgan says.

Perseverance examined the spots with instruments that can identify their chemical contents and found that the rims contain iron phosphate molecules. On Earth, rings with similar texture and chemistry are associated with ancient microbial life . The chemical reactions that create the rings can be an energy source for microbes.

“They don’t require life, of course, and that’s an important caveat,” Stack Morgan says. “But based on our experience with similar things on Earth, there is a possibility that life could have been involved, and these could have a biological origin.”

The rock has other confusing features that muddy the picture of how it formed, Stack Morgan says. It is shot through with white veins of calcium sulfate. These veins are filled with millimeter-sized crystals of olivine, a mineral that forms from magma. The inclusion of both the spots and these volcanic features in the same rock is “a little bit mysterious,” Stack Morgan says, as they point to different origins. Figuring out how the rock formed could help tell how likely it is to have had the right conditions and temperatures to host biology.

Planetary scientist Paul Byrne thinks we should be circumspect about the finding.

“Could this truly be a biosignature? Yes. And if it is, then it really is the kind of society-altering discovery that the discovery of truly extraterrestrial life would be,” says Byrne, of Washington University in St. Louis. But it’s also possible that the spots came from something other than life, “in which case all this is is an interesting example of water-rock chemistry.”

The only way to find out for sure is to bring the rock home. A big part of Perseverance’s mission is to collect samples from interesting rocks for a future spacecraft to return to Earth, where they can be studied in more sophisticated laboratories than a rover can carry on its back. Perseverance has thrown everything it has at this rock already, Stack Morgan says.

But funding uncertainty has recently put the program, known as Mars Sample Return, on hold (SN: 5/8/24).

“With this sample, the rationale for MSR is strengthened even more, and should I hope motivate NASA to commit to pulling off this project sooner rather than later,” Byrne says.

Stack Morgan says the rover team is carrying on despite the budget uncertainty.

“We have a mission to carry out, and a job to do: collecting compelling samples,” Stack Morgan says. “It can only be our hope that the samples that we collect are compelling enough to justify the cost of Mars Sample Return. I think with this exciting sample, that really hits that home.”

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Why we explore Mars—and what decades of missions have revealed

In the 1960s, humans set out to discover what the red planet has to teach us. Now, NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s.

Mars has captivated humans since we first set eyes on it as a star-like object in the night sky. Early on, its reddish hue set the planet apart from its shimmering siblings, each compelling in its own way, but none other tracing a ruddy arc through Earth’s heavens. Then, in the late 1800s, telescopes first revealed a surface full of intriguing features—patterns and landforms that scientists at first wrongly ascribed to a bustling Martian civilization. Now, we know there are no artificial constructions on Mars. But we’ve also learned that, until 3.5 billion years ago, the dry, toxic planet we see today might have once been as habitable as Earth.

Since the 1960s, humans have set out to discover what Mars can teach us about how planets grow and evolve, and whether it has ever hosted alien life. So far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the trip to the red planet, but that could soon change. NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s—and several new missions are launching before then to push exploration forward. Here’s a look at why these journeys are so important—and what humans have learned about Mars through decades of exploration.

Why explore Mars

Over the last century, everything we’ve learned about Mars suggests that the planet was once quite capable of hosting ecosystems—and that it might still be an incubator for microbial life today.

Mars is the fourth rock from the sun, just after Earth. It is just a smidge more than half of Earth’s size , with gravity only 38 percent that of Earth’s. It takes longer than Earth to complete a full orbit around the sun—but it rotates around its axis at roughly the same speed. That’s why one year on Mars lasts for 687 Earth days , while a day on Mars is just 40 minutes longer than on Earth.

Despite its smaller size, the planet’s land area is also roughly equivalent to the surface area of Earth’s continents —meaning that, at least in theory, Mars has the same amount of habitable real estate. Unfortunately, the planet is now wrapped in a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and cannot support earthly life-forms. Methane gas also periodically appears in the atmosphere of this desiccated world, and the soil contains compounds that would be toxic to life as we know it. Although water does exist on Mars, it’s locked into the planet’s icy polar caps and buried, perhaps in abundance, beneath the Martian surface .

Today, when scientists scrutinize the Martian surface, they see features that are unquestionably the work of ancient, flowing liquids : branching streams, river valleys, basins, and deltas. Those observations suggest that the planet may have once had a vast ocean covering its northern hemisphere. Elsewhere, rainstorms soaked the landscape, lakes pooled, and rivers gushed, carving troughs into the terrain. It was also likely wrapped in a thick atmosphere capable of maintaining liquid water at Martian temperatures and pressures.

Somewhere during Martian evolution, the planet went through a dramatic transformation, and a world that was once rather Earthlike became the dusty, dry husk we see today. The question now is, what happened? Where did those liquids go, and what happened to the Martian atmosphere ?

Exploring Mars helps scientists learn about momentous shifts in climate that can fundamentally alter planets. It also lets us look for biosignatures, signs that might reveal whether life was abundant in the planet’s past—and if it still exists on Mars today. And, the more we learn about Mars, the better equipped we’ll be to try to make a living there, someday in the future.

Past missions, major discoveries

Since the 1960s, humans have sent dozens of spacecraft to study Mars . Early missions were flybys, with spacecraft furiously snapping photos as they zoomed past. Later, probes pulled into orbit around Mars; more recently, landers and rovers have touched down on the surface.

But sending a spacecraft to Mars is hard , and landing on the planet is even harder. The thin Martian atmosphere makes descent tricky, and more than 60 percent of landing attempts have failed. So far, four space agencies—NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)—have put spacecraft in Martian orbit. With eight successful landings, the United States is the only country that has operated a craft on the planet’s surface. The United Arab Emirates and China might join that club if their recently launched Hope and Tianwen-1 missions reach the red planet safely in February 2021.

Early highlights of Mars missions include NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft , which swung by Mars in July 1965 and captured the first close-up images of this foreign world. In 1971, the Soviet space program sent the first spacecraft into Martian orbit. Called Mars 3 , it returned roughly eight months of observations about the planet's topography, atmosphere, weather, and geology. The mission also sent a lander to the surface, but it returned data for only about 20 seconds before going quiet.

Over the subsequent decades, orbiters returned far more detailed data on the planet's atmosphere and surface, and finally dispelled the notion, widely held by scientists since the late 1800s, that Martian canals were built by an alien civilization. They also revealed some truly dramatic features: the small world boasts the largest volcanoes in the solar system, and one of the largest canyons yet discovered—a chasm as long as the continental United States. Dust storms regularly sweep over its plains, and winds whip up localized dust devils.

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In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully operate on the planet’s surface, returning photos until 1982. They also conducted biological experiments on Martian soil that were designed to uncover signs of life in space—but their results were inconclusive , and scientists still disagree over how to interpret the data.

NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission , launched in 1996, put the first free-moving rover—called Sojourner—on the planet. Its successors include the rovers Spirit and Opportunity , which explored the planet for far longer than expected and returned more than 100,000 images before dust storms obliterated their solar panels in the 2010s.

Now, two NASA spacecraft are active on the Martian surface: InSight is probing the planet’s interior and it has already revealed that “ marsquakes” routinely rattle its surface . The Curiosity rover , launched in 2012, is also still wheeling around in Gale Crater, taking otherworldly selfies, and studying the rocks and sediments deposited in the crater’s ancient lakebed.

Several spacecraft are transmitting data from orbit: NASA’s MAVEN orbiter , Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , and Mars Odyssey ; ESA’s Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter ; and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission .

Together, these missions have shown scientists that Mars is an active planet that is rich in the ingredients needed for life as we know it—water, organic carbon , and an energy source. Now, the question is: Did life ever evolve on Mars , and is it still around?

Future of Mars exploration

Once every 26 months , Earth and Mars are aligned in a way that minimizes travel times and expense , enabling spacecraft to make the interplanetary journey in roughly half a year. Earth’s space agencies tend to launch probes during these conjunctions, the most recent of which happens in the summer of 2020. Three countries are sending spacecraft to Mars during this window: The United Arab Emirates, which launched its Hope spacecraft on July 20 and will orbit Mars to study its atmosphere and weather patterns; China, which launched its Tianwen-1 on July 23 , and the United States, currently targeting July 30 for the launch of its Perseverance rover .

Perseverance is a large, six-wheeled rover equipped with a suite of sophisticated instruments. Its target is Jezero Crater, site of an ancient river delta , and a likely location for ancient life-forms to have thrived. Once on the surface, Perseverance will study Martian climate and weather, test technologies that could help humans survive on Mars, and collect samples from dozens of rocks that will eventually be brought to Earth. Among its goals is helping to determine whether Mars was—or is—inhabited, making it a true life-finding Mars mission.

All of the robotic activity is, of course, laying the groundwork for sending humans to the next world over. NASA is targeting the 2030s as a reasonable timeframe for setting the first boots on Mars, and is developing a space capsule, Orion , that will be able to ferry humans to the moon and beyond.

Private spaceflight companies such as SpaceX are also getting into the Mars game. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly said that humanity must become “ a multiplanetary species ” if we are to survive, and he is working on a plan that could see a million people living on Mars before the end of this century.

Soon, in one way or another, humanity may finally know whether our neighboring planet ever hosted life—and whether there’s a future for our species on another world.

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One year on 'Mars': Inside NASA's ultra-realistic isolation study

by Lucie AUBOURG

Sealed inside a habitat in Texas and cut off from the outside world for over a year, Kelly Haston was the commander of a first-of-its-kind simulation for NASA to prepare for a future mission to Mars.

From conducting mock "Marswalks" to tending to a vertical garden, and occasionally grappling with boredom— Haston expressed pride in advancing the cause of space exploration while admitting the experience made her reconsider the reality of life on the Red Planet.

"Going to space would be an amazing opportunity," the 53-year-old biologist told AFP. "But I would say that it would be harder having experienced this, to know how it feels to leave your people."

The overarching goal of the experiment, called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) Mission 1, is to better understand the impacts of isolation on a crew's performance and health.

The project lasted 378 days and concluded in early July.

After all, a round-trip to Mars could easily take more than two years, factoring in the transit time of six-to-nine months and the time NASA hopes to spend on the planet.

For Haston, the hardest part was clear: "I could have been in that habitat for another year and survived with all of the other restrictions, but your people—you miss your people so much."

Communications with the outside world were delayed by twenty minutes each way, simulating how long it takes a radio signal to travel between Earth and Mars.

They were also some limits on sending and receiving videos, to account for bandwidth restrictions.

The worst feeling was when relatives or friends were experiencing rough times, said Haston. "You couldn't be there for them in real time."

Her only direct human contacts were her three teammates and fellow Mars colonists—but she insists they never went stir-crazy.

"Of course, there were times where you had crabby days, or something was bothering us, either as a crew or as an individual," she explained.

"But the communication was extremely good in this group," she said and besides, such problems were few and far between. "Up until the very end, we ate meals together."

Their 1,700-square-foot (160-square-meter) home included crew quarters, common areas and even an area for crops like tomatoes and peppers.

Called "Mars Dune Alpha" the 3D-printed habitat was installed inside a hangar at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Simulated "Marswalks" took place in an exterior area that recreated the Martian environment with red soil and cliffs painted along the walls.

Crew members donned spacesuits and passed through an airlock to reach the "sandbox," as it was nicknamed, with tasks coordinated by their colleagues inside.

"There were days where you did really wish you were outside, I can't lie," says the Canadian who now lives in California. But, to her surprise, these pangs only intensified towards the end.

Periods of boredom are an inevitable part of long space expeditions, and it was precisely this extended isolation that set CHAPEA apart from most prior "analog" missions.

Halston staved off ennui by embroidering mission symbols and images of Mars.

Of course, "analogs can't address all problems or all issues of an eventual mission to Mars," she said, though the lessons learned will aid in planning.

Each team member's food intake was meticulously documented, their blood, saliva and urine samples were collected, and their sleep habits, physical and cognitive performance analyzed.

"The food system is one of the greatest mass drivers on a human mission for human logistics, and we are going to be resource-constrained on these missions," NASA scientist Grace Douglas said on a podcast.

This makes it critical to determine the minimum necessary provisions to maintain astronauts' health and ensure the mission's success.

For now, NASA is keeping the details of the crew's tasks under wraps to preserve the element of surprise for the next two iterations of the mission. CHAPEA 2 is set for 2025.

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Science | November 2021

Inside the Experiment to Create Mars on Earth

A hostile landscape. Cramped quarters. Dehydrated food. A photographer takes part in an attempt to live on another planet

A rainbow appears after a storm on the faux-Martian habitat.

Photographs by Cassandra Klos

Text by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz

When Cassandra Klos was growing up in rural New Hampshire, it was easy to see the stars. She traced the constellations with her finger and imagined how it would feel to travel among them. As a college art student, she launched a photo project about Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who claimed to have been abducted by aliens.

Then Klos went on her first mission to Mars.

To be clear, no earthling has actually set foot on the red planet. NASA is hoping to send a crew there in the 2030s, as is China, and the private company SpaceX is working to establish a permanent Martian presence with starships ferrying humans back and forth to Earth. “We don’t want to be one of those single-planet species,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in April , outlining the company’s ambitions. “We want to be a multi-planet species.”

First, though, there’s some figuring out to do. Designing the right spacecraft and living spaces is part of the challenge. There are also prosaic, but important, questions. How will people shower with a limited supply of water? What will it take to grow fresh greens to supplement the steady diet of dehydrated food? And with civilians from different backgrounds living together in close quarters, will Martian habitats end up resembling the set of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit , where hell is other people?

The two-week mission Klos joined in 2015 was designed to explore those kinds of questions. It took place at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, four hours south of Salt Lake City, but everyone spoke and acted as though they were actually on Mars. A group of six people lived in a two-story cylindrical building. The commander, a former member of the Army National Guard, kept the participants on a strict schedule of fixing electrical systems, taking inventory, tidying up the facilities and sampling the soil. Everyone was assigned a special role: Klos’ was to prepare reports to share with the public. The health safety officer kept tabs on the crew’s well-being, and the engineer monitored levels of carbon dioxide and solar power. 

Before stepping outside in a spacesuit, Klos and the others had to get permission from mission control back on “Earth” (actually a coordinator stationed in a nearby town). That person would send information about the winds and weather, and determine how long each person could stay outside the base. Sometimes dust storms rolled in, cutting off the solar power supply just as they would on Mars. Klos was allowed to bathe only once a week, using a couple of buckets of water. She was enchanted.

“This is not performance art,” says Klos. “These are real scientific endeavors. Sometimes people make the critique that we’re role-playing too much. But the goal is to really live the way people are going to live on Mars so scientists can figure out how to make it work when we get there.” 

There are about a dozen such habitats around the globe, hosting simulations that run anywhere from two weeks to a full year. One of these is run by NASA’s Human Research Program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. But other facilities are funded by private organizations. The Mars Society , established by Brooklyn-born aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, operates the habitat in Utah, where Klos returned for another mission in 2017, and another in the Canadian Arctic. Klos also took part in a mission at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS . The facility is run by the International MoonBase Alliance , a group founded by the Dutch entrepreneur Henk Rogers. 

HI-SEAS is located on Hawaii’s big island at 8,200 feet above sea level, on top of the active volcano Mauna Loa. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is collaborating with the facility to gather information about volcanic caves and the microbes that live in those Mars-like conditions. HI-SEAS is also studying the limitations of doing that kind of work while wearing heavy spacesuits. It’s hard enough for astronauts to hold a screwdriver in a gloved hand while repairing the International Space Station, but if people are going to be clambering on Martian rocks looking for microbes, they’ll need the right gear. 

The missions are open to people who have no background in science, engineering or astronaut training. After all, the goal is to send ordinary folks into space, so it’s worth finding out whether ordinary folks can coexist in Mars-like conditions here on Earth. Each two-story habitat at a simulation facility has usable floor space of only about 1,200 square feet—the size of two small apartments stacked on top of each other—which isn’t much room for six people who can’t just breeze out for a walk around the block. 

To get a spot on a Mars or Moon simulation, you have to propose a project that the leaders believe is useful. One recent HI-SEAS participant focused on 3-D printing, looking at ways to create bricks out of volcanic rock. Another studied hydrogen fuel cells. Yet another tried out different methods for growing hydroponic lettuce. Many projects focus on psychological research, looking at how various foods, exercises and smells influence people’s moods while they’re crammed together in a pressurized capsule. 

Preparations for Mars may prove to have benefits for life on Earth. Earlier research for space travel paved the way for medical advances such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The data we’re gathering now about surviving on solar power, conserving water and growing plants in arid conditions could be useful here at home as our climate changes.

The director of HI-SEAS, the 32-year-old astrobiologist Michaela Musilova, says she makes an effort to assemble diverse crews, using the internet to recruit teachers, journalists and artists like Klos. On a mission Musilova led in the fall of 2020, she ended up with crew members who supported opposing candidates in the November presidential election. “That made for very interesting dynamics,” she says. But Musilova says her teams are most innovative when their members come from different backgrounds. The range of perspectives is great for problem-solving, and the variety of personal stories can help combat boredom. And people who are eager to spend time on Mars, simulated or otherwise, tend to have certain things in common, including a willingness to live with strangers in close quarters and an enthusiasm for future space explorations. 

“We all have our quirks,” Musilova says. “We’re all going to make mistakes and annoy other people. But when someone is having a bad day, we go out of our way to cheer them up. When someone is being a pain in the ass, we’re able to have some empathy.” If living together on Mars can make us into better versions of ourselves, that might be the greatest breakthrough of all. 

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Cassandra Klos | READ MORE

Cassandra Klos is a fine art photographer who from 2015 to 2017 was the artist-in-residence at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah.

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz | READ MORE

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine. She was previously a senior editor at the Atlantic .

Has Nasa found evidence of ancient life on Mars? An expert examines the latest discovery

Reader in Astrobiology, The University of Edinburgh

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Sean McMahon has received funding from Nasa.

The University of Edinburgh provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Nasa has announced the first detection of possible biosignatures in a rock on the surface of Mars. The rock contains the first martian organic matter to be decisively detected by the Perseverance rover , as well as curious discoloured spots that could indicate the past activity of microorganisms.

Ken Farley, project scientist on the mission, has called this “the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance”.

Perseverance is part of Mars 2020, the first mission since Viking that is explicitly designed to seek life on Mars (officially, to “search for potential evidence of past life using observations regarding habitability and preservation as a guide”). Arguably, that objective has now been achieved: potential evidence for past life has been found. But much more work is needed to test this interpretation of the data. Here’s what we do know.

Since landing in Jezero crater a few years ago, Perseverance has traversed a series of rocks formed nearly four billion years before present. Mars back then was far more habitable than the cold, dry, toxic red planet of today.

There were thousands of rivers and lakes, a thick atmosphere, and comfortable temperatures and chemical conditions for life. Many of the rocks in Jezero are sedimentary: mud, silt and sand dumped by a river flowing into a lake.

The new discovery concerns one of these rocks. Informally named “Cheyava Falls” (a waterfall in Arizona), it is a small reddish block of what looks like a mudstone, enriched with organic molecules. The rock is also laced with parallel white veins. Between the veins are millimetre-scale whitish spots with dark rims. For an astrobiologist, all these features are intriguing. Let’s take them one-by-one.

First, “organic molecules” , are made of carbon and hydrogen (commonly with sulphur, oxygen or nitrogen as well). Examples include the proteins, fats, sugars, and nucleic acids from which all life as we know it is constructed.

Organic matter is common in rocks on Earth, most of it derived from the remains of ancient organisms. But the term “organic” is slightly misleading: such molecules can also be produced by non-biological reactions (in fact, we know this was happening four billion years ago on Mars).

Simple non-biological organic molecules are common in the universe, and Nasa’s Curiosity rover already found them in mudstones in Gale Crater. They were also reportedly detected by Perseverance in Jezero crater last year.

Nevertheless, Ken Farley considers the new observation the first truly “compelling detection” of organics made by Perseverance. Nasa has not told us which types of organic molecules are actually present in Cheyava Falls, so it is hard to evaluate their origins. They could turn out to be biological, but a full analysis using laboratories on Earth would be needed to settle this question.

Next, the veins. These are composed of calcium sulphate, which precipitated like limescale when liquid water ran along fractures in the subsurface. Veins like these are common in Martian sedimentary rocks (Curiosity saw plenty of them), and of course they are not “biosignatures” even though they normally represent habitable conditions.

My own work has shown that microorganisms inhabiting subsurface fractures can produce chemical fossils that get trapped in calcium sulphate veins. Strangely, however, the veins in Cheyava Falls also contain olivine, an igneous mineral. This might suggest that the water was injected at temperatures too high for life. We need more data to know one way or the other.

Finally, what about those whitish, discoloured spots? These look like the “reduction spots”, also called “leopard spots”, commonly seen in red sedimentary rocks on Earth. Such rocks are rusty-red because they contain an oxidised form of iron. When chemical reactions modify the iron to a less oxidised state, it becomes soluble. Water carries the pigment away leaving a bleached spot behind.

On Earth, these reactions are often driven by subsurface-dwelling bacteria. They use the oxidised iron as a source of energy, just as you and I use oxygen in the air. On Mars, bacteria-like organisms could have used the organic matter in the rock to complete the reaction (just as we use glucose from the food we eat).

Reduction spots haven’t been seen before on Mars, although bleached linear “halos” observed by Curiosity in Gale crater are somewhat similar. As one of the few astrobiologists to have studied reduction spots on Earth – and found evidence for biological processes within them – I am personally delighted. But as ever, caution is needed.

Potential non-biological causes need to be explored and ruled out. Iron-dissolving reactions can and do happen in sedimentary rocks without life. The dark margins of the Cheyava Falls spots are enriched in both iron and phosphate, an association previously suggested to occur around some calcium sulphate veins on Mars. This observation is consistent with life, but also with chemical reactions driven by acidic fluids.

The new findings will nevertheless embolden those calling on Nasa and the European Space Agency to proceed with the troubled multi-billion-dollar sample retrieval programme , which Perseverance was supposed to begin. The rover has now cored out a piece of the Cheyava Falls rock. If current plans are realised – a big if – then future spacecraft will collect this piece (and others) and bring it to Earth.

It will then be analysed in state-of-the-art laboratories far more capable than the instruments aboard Perseverance. Until that happens, we cannot be sure whether Perseverance has really found fossils of ancient life on Mars. The evidence so far is not definitive, but it is certainly tantalising.

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Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?

NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a Mars mission: the trauma of isolation.

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By Nathaniel Rich

• Published Feb. 25, 2024 Updated March 8, 2024

Alyssa Shannon was on her morning commute from Oakland to Sacramento, where she worked as an advanced-practice nurse at the university hospital, when NASA called to tell her that she had been selected for a Mars mission. She screamed and pulled off the highway. As soon as she hung up, she called her partner, an information-security operations manager at the University of California, Berkeley, named Jake Harwood.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

“Wow,” Harwood said.

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “Wow.”

They sat in silence with the information, struggling to fathom the shape and weight of it, for a very long time.

Later that morning, Nathan Jones, an emergency-room physician in Springfield, Ill., received the call that he had so fervently awaited and so deeply dreaded. His thoughts turned immediately to his wife, Kacie, and their three sons, who were 8, 10 and 12. You get only 18 years with your kids, he told himself. If you accept this opportunity, you’ll have to give up one of them.

And yet ... he couldn’t possibly turn down NASA. Mars, he had convinced himself, was his destiny. As a child, he dreamed of walking across an alien planet in a state of wonder; he hoped to attend space camp, but his family couldn’t afford it. Once his sons were old enough, he took them to Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch.

When he told Kacie the news, she nearly burst into tears.

This Mars mission, CHAPEA, would not actually go to Mars. But the success of CHAPEA (“Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog”) will hang on the precision with which it simulates the first human expedition to Mars — an eventuality that NASA expects to occur by 2040.

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This Mars rock could show evidence of life. Here's what Perseverance rover found.

The Perseverance rover found a rock on Mars that scientists think could show evidence that life once existed on the Red Planet.

The rock – nicknamed "Cheyava Falls" after a waterfall in the Grand Canyon – has chemical markings that could be the trace of life forms that existed when water ran freely through the area long ago, according to a news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory .

"More than any of the other rocks that we have collected so far on Perseverance, this is a rock that may carry information on one of the key goals of the whole Perseverance mission," Ken Farley, a Perseverance project scientist with the California Institute of Technology, told USA TODAY. "That is – was there ever life on Mars in the very distant past?"

The first unique markings that scientists noticed on the rock's surface were a network of distinctive white veins. When Perseverance peered closer, it also found dozens of tiny, bright spots ringed with black.

The spots – found on rocks on the Earth – are particularly exciting to scientists because they show evidence of chemical reactions that release iron and phosphate, which can provide an energy source for microbes, a tiny form of life.

“On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface," David Flannery, a Perseverance scientist from Queensland University of Technology, said in the news release.

More: NASA releases eye-popping, never-before-seen images of nebulae, galaxies in space

Perseverance investigates Martian river channel for signs of life

Perseverance found the rock, which measures more than 3 feet by 2 feet, on Sunday as it explored the Neretva Vallis , a quarter-mile-wide valley carved out by rushing water billions of years ago. Scientists have directed the rover to explore rocks that were shaped or changed by running water in the hopes of finding evidence of microbial life.

A scan of the rock using a special instrument on Perseverance's arm called SHERLOC picked up on organic matter. The rover then used another instrument , a "precision X-ray device powered by artificial intelligence," to examine the black rings on the rock.

Still, non-biological processes could also have formed the rock's unique features. Scientists want to bring the rock back to Earth so it can be studied in more detail to puzzle out how it formed.

Although the rock doesn't prove the past existence of life on Mars, it's exactly the kind of sample that the team was hoping to take home for further analysis.

"It's the kind of target that, if we're back in the laboratory, we could actually sort out a lot of these details and make progress on understanding what's going on," Farley said.

Although it's not clear exactly how the team will get the samples back to Earth, NASA has a plan in the works, Farley said. Perseverance "very likely will hand them off to a future mission that brings a rocket to the surface of Mars," he said.

Perseverance touched down on the Red Planet in February of 2021 after a journey through space of more than 200 days and 300 million miles. The rover's mission is to seek out signs of ancient life by examining rock and soil samples – Cheyava Falls was the 22nd rock sample it collected, according to NASA.

Scientists have come across what they thought was possible organic matter in the same area of Mars before, but the tools Perseverance used to uncover it this time are more accurate, Farley said.

"We're much more confident that this is organic matter than in the previous detection," he said.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. Reach her on email at [email protected]. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.

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Nasa experiment suggests need to dig deep for evidence of life on mars.

William Steigerwald

According to a new NASA laboratory experiment, rovers may have to dig about 6.6 feet (two meters) or more under the Martian surface to find signs of ancient life because ionizing radiation from space degrades small molecules such as amino acids relatively quickly.

Amino acids can be created by life and by non-biological chemistry. However, finding certain amino acids on Mars would be considered a potential sign of ancient Martian life because they are widely used by terrestrial life as a component to build proteins. Proteins are essential to life as they are used to make enzymes which speed up or regulate chemical reactions and to make structures.

“Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in the Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought,” said Alexander Pavlov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Current Mars rover missions drill down to about two inches (around five centimeters). At those depths, it would take only 20 million years to destroy amino acids completely. The addition of perchlorates and water increases the rate of amino acid destruction even further.” 20 million years is a relatively brief amount of time because scientists are looking for evidence of ancient life on the surface which would have been present billions of years ago when Mars was more like Earth.

This result suggests a new search strategy for missions that are limited to sampling at shallow depths. “Missions with shallow drill sampling have to seek recently exposed outcrops – e.g., recent microcraters with ages less than 10 million years or the material ejected from such craters,” said Pavlov, lead author of a paper on this research published June 24 in Astrobiology.

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles (mostly protons and helium ions) generated by powerful events on the Sun and in deep space, such as solar flares and exploding stars . They can degrade or destroy organic molecules when they penetrate yards (meters) into a solid rock, ionizing and destroying everything in their path.

Earth’s thick atmosphere and global magnetic field shields the surface from most cosmic rays. In its youth, Mars had these features also but lost this protection as it aged. However, there’s evidence that billions of years ago, the thicker atmosphere allowed liquid water to persist on the surface of the Red Planet. Since liquid water is essential for life, scientists want to know if life emerged on Mars and search for evidence of ancient Martian life by examining Mars rocks for organic molecules such as amino acids.

The team mixed several types of amino acids in silica, hydrated silica, or silica and perchlorate to simulate conditions in Martian soil and sealed the samples in test tubes under vacuum conditions to simulate the thin Martian air. Some samples were kept at room temperature, about the warmest it ever gets on the surface of Mars, while others were chilled to a more typical minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 55 degrees Celsius). The samples were blasted with various levels of gamma radiation – a type of highly energetic light — to simulate cosmic-ray doses up to that received from about 80 million years of exposure in the Martian surface rocks.   

The experiment is the first to mix amino acids with simulated Martian soil. Previous experiments tested gamma radiation on pure amino acid samples, but it’s highly unlikely to find a large cluster of a single amino acid in a billion-year-old rock.

“Our work is the first comprehensive study where the destruction (radiolysis) of a broad range of amino acids was studied under a variety of Mars-relevant factors (temperature, water content, perchlorate abundance) and the rates of radiolysis were compared,” said Pavlov. “It turns out that the addition of silicates and particularly silicates with perchlorates greatly increases the destruction rates of amino acids.”

While amino acids haven’t been found on Mars yet, they have been discovered in meteorites , including one from Mars. “We did identify several straight-chain amino acids in the Antarctic Martian meteorite RBT 04262 in the Astrobiology Analytical Lab at Goddard that we believe originated on Mars (not contamination from terrestrial biology), although the mechanism of formation of these amino acids in RBT 04262 remains unclear,” said Danny Glavin, a co-author of the paper at NASA Goddard. “Since meteorites from Mars typically get ejected from depths of at least 3.3 feet (one meter) or more, it is possible that the amino acids in RBT 04262 were protected from cosmic radiation.”

Organic matter has been found on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers; however, it is not a conclusive sign of life since it could have been created by non-biological chemistry. Also, the results of the experiment imply that it is likely that the organic material observed by these rovers has been altered over time by radiation and therefore not as it was when formed.

The research was funded by NASA under award number 80GSFC21M0002, 15-EXO15_2-0179 and NASA’s Planetary Science Division Internal Scientist Funding Program through the Fundamental Laboratory Research (FLaRe) work package.

Bill Steigerwald

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

[email protected]

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NASA’s Yearlong Mars Simulation Is a Test of Mental Mettle

On June 25, four crew members will suit up and embark on a Mars mission, living for an entire year in a  small 3D-printed habitat with only each other for company. But these space explorers won’t leave Earth. Their simulated Martian environment is contained in a large hangar at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and it’s designed to test the psychological and social challenges that will confront early visitors to the Red Planet, where remoteness and the harsh terrain will  make life formidable . 

The program is called Chapea, which stands for  Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog . NASA hopes that lessons from this unique social experiment could aid future astronauts when they really do set foot on the ruddy Martian dirt—such as learning how the space agency can make the crew comfortable and help them get along with each other, or deal with loneliness or homesickness. “If we get to the end of the year and the crew is complete and we haven’t had any attrition, that would be, for me, a huge thing. It sounds doable, but it actually will be very hard,” says Kelly Haston, the mission’s biomedical researcher and commander. “We know we can actually leave. We’re volunteers, so there is an exit sign. On Mars you won’t have that.” 

Just like the first batch of Martian astronauts, Haston and her crewmates—Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones, and Alyssa Shannon—will live in a cramped space without contact with other people. They’ll be able to communicate with mission control, but with a 20-minute delay, as if they were in fact some 100 million miles away from home. Like real visitors to Mars, they’ll see only a stark, lifeless landscape, which  NASA is simulating with an enclosed space covered with Martian mural images and a 1,200-square-foot sandbox filled with red sand. Each week, they will have multiple opportunities to go outside for “Mars walks”—while wearing spacesuits. 

The 1,700-square-foot structure they’ll live in has been  3D-printed using a simulated Martian regolith to mimic NASA’s plans for future missions. It has Ikea-like furniture, clean spaces, and bright lighting, like a high-end hostel for space workers. The habitat includes small individual crew quarters, a communal space with a table for team dinners and meetings, chairs and a couch, a work area, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and an exercise room. And that’s about it. “The objective of the Chapea mission is to collect data on the crew’s health and performance while they are living in a realistically restricted environment and living the lifestyle that could be expected of Mars astronauts,” says deputy project manager Raina MacLeod.

While the idea of throwing four people into a single structure for a long time and seeing how they fare sounds kind of like  a reality TV show , the crew will be disciplined, and they’ll have tasks to complete. In many ways, their day-to-day life will be similar to that of  astronauts aboard the International Space Station , just with a bit more space and no floating. (People will feel lighter and bouncier on Mars, which is smaller and less massive than Earth, but that’s hard to simulate.) During the crew’s work hours, they’ll conduct mission operations, like the “Mars walks,” growing plants, getting exercise, cleaning the habitat, and maintaining equipment. The kitchen’s equipped with a small oven and a fridge, and they’ll have to rely on reconstituted dehydrated food between limited batches of fresh food delivered by infrequent cargo resupply missions. Their bathrooms have a shower, toilet, and sink with running water—a  big improvement over life in microgravity—though the water for each crew member will be rationed, as there will be very  limited water available on Mars .

NASA will be monitoring the Chapea crew using cameras posted inside the habitat, and someone will be available to them 24/7 at mission control. Like astronauts in Earth orbit, the crew will have private conferences with medical professionals to keep tabs on their mental and physical health, and those will be the only communications not subject to the usual time delay. They will also fill out surveys regarding their mood and temperament. The crew will be able to stay in touch with friends and family—but while they can send and receive video messages and emails, real-time conversations with them will be impossible.

While the accommodations look nice, the relative isolation might affect crew members over time, and it’s important to see how they fare. “NASA is right to study this, because what we’ve learned is that social isolation is a very dangerous psychological toxin,” says Craig Haney, a UC Santa Cruz psychologist who researches  solitary confinement . Haney has documented the debilitating and sometimes permanent effects of isolation on prisoners—effects that can emerge in just a couple weeks. The situations aren’t the same, of course: While the Chapea bedrooms are similar in size to a solitary confinement cell, the crew also has other spaces for activities—and they have each other. They’ll still be more isolated than normal, however, like many of us were during the early days of Covid-19. During Covid “we’ve been denied the normal social interactions that we’ve learned to depend on. For many people, it’s proven to be extremely stressful, and it has generated forms of psychological maladies that were unanticipated at the outset of the pandemic,” he says.

With the Mars simulation, Haney suggests that NASA should watch the crew for danger signs, like symptoms of depression, heightened irritability, and moodiness, and changes in sleeping and eating patterns. And for the crew, he recommends creating routines, including social rituals, and trying to reach out to the outside world, not just to NASA’s mission control, to lessen the feelings of isolation.

For her part, Haston plans to bring along videos of familiar places and audio recordings of sounds and music that have meaning for her, anticipating the unsettling lack of sound in the simulated Mars environment. She also plans on using meditation to deal with anxiety. 

Chapea builds on previous Mars-like experiments, including the  NASA-funded Hi-SEAS simulation on the northern slope of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Hi-SEAS ran six experiments between 2013 and 2018, with the last one  aborted after just four days when a crew member had to be taken to a hospital after suffering an electric shock. 

Kate Greene, author of  Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, was in the first Hi-SEAS crew, which lived in the habitat for four months. (One of her crewmates was Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and artist who later flew in orbit on  SpaceX’s Inspiration4 .) Greene thinks these programs are useful. “What makes them worthwhile is thoughtful experimental design,” she says. “I think it is of the utmost importance to consider the human factors involved in a long-duration space mission. As Kim Binsted, the head of Hi-SEAS, often said, ‘If something goes wrong psychologically or sociologically with the crew, it can be as disastrous as if a rocket exploded.’”

Ashley Kowalski, who served on an eight-month US-Russian Mars simulation called SIRIUS-21, says they are also good for helping future crews psychologically prepare in advance. “Until you’re in that type of environment, you don’t really know how you’ll react to issues and situations that come up,” she says.

Ultimately, a real Mars mission will be much tougher than any simulation on Earth. Those astronauts will have to worry about threats like  space radiation , the  health effects of microgravity , and running out of water, food,  power , and breathable air. And unlike the Chapea volunteers, if they get sick of their crewmates, they can’t just quit. 

But Haston points out the positive side of this unique situation too. “There’s the negative people bring up: ‘You’re going to be four people getting on each other’s nerves.’ But we’re also going to become a tremendous unit that can do things and understand each other in a way that most people don’t have in their workplace,” she says. “You’ll be so dependent on each other, and also so close to each other. Seeing that outcome will be amazing.”

Update 6-5-2023 7:00 PM: This story was updated to correct the nationalities of the agencies that ran the SIRIUS-21 program.

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April 2, 2019

Looking for Life on Mars: Viking Experiment Team Member Reflects on Divisive Findings

Patricia Straat looks back on the Viking lander experiment that aimed to find microbes

By Clara Moskowitz

NASA, JPL-Caltech and University of Arizona

Patricia Straat served as co-experimenter on one of the most controversial experiments ever sent to Mars: the Labeled Release instrument on the Viking Mars landers. The experiment’s principal investigator, Gilbert Levin, insists to this day that the project found extraterrestrial life. Most scientists doubt this interpretation, but the issue has never been fully settled.

When Viking 1 and 2 touched down on Mars in 1976, each carried several instruments to study the planet and look for signs of life. The Labeled Release experiment mixed small samples of Martian soil with drops of water containing a nutrient solution and some radioactive carbon. The instrument then sampled the atmosphere of its internal chamber. If it detected the radioactive carbon, the thinking went, then microorganisms in the soil must have metabolized the nutrients and emitted the carbon. The air around a control version, in contrast, heated up to temperatures thought to kill microbes, should not have any radioactive carbon.

And that is essentially what the investigators found—yet Viking’s other experiments saw no signs of life or of the organic compounds needed to support life. Many scientists concluded that the results were too good to believe and that the findings might be explained by reactive chemicals such as perchlorates in the Martian soil.

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Now Straat has published a memoir, To Mars with Love, telling the inside story of this chapter in space history (available at www.tomarswithlove.com ). Scientific American spoke with Straat about the tumultuous process of planning the experiment and analyzing its results, and about the risks of Mars exploration if life does exist on the red planet.

[An edited transcript of the conversation follows.]

Were you always interested in space?

By the time I was 12, I could identify all the major constellations in the region where I grew up.

I watched the moon landing on television in 1969, and that really turned me on. At the time I was an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University working in molecular biology and enzyme systems, which was a long cry from anything involved in space. I decided I wanted to make a career move.

Patricia Ann Straat working with the flight components of the Labeled Release instrument prior to the 1976 Viking Mission. Credit: Patricia Ann Straat and Bruce Connor

How did you get involved in Viking?

It was 1970 and Gil Levin, who designed the Labeled Release life detection experiment, heard I was considering a move and called me for an interview. At the time I was not really interested in leaving academia for private industry. But I met Gil and found him absolutely fascinating. He had just found out that his experiment had been selected by NASA to be sent to Mars, and he wanted someone to implement that experiment because he had a company to run. All my friends thought it was a suicidal career move, but it just sounded so fascinating.

What was the process like to develop the Labeled Release experiment?

It was a major, major, major effort. For the first few years we worked on refining the science and worked with the engineers developing the hardware, testing it as we went along.

The first test of all three life detection experiments in a flight instrument occurred in the fall of 1973. All three failed. That started a major crisis. It was nonstop meetings, and we worked 24/7 on fixing and testing the hardware to get it ready for launch. We were still analyzing data as the biology instrument was sent to the Cape [Cape Canaveral, Fla.] for the launch.

Viking launched in 1975 and landed on Mars in 1976. What was that like?

I went out to [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in] California for the landing and half expected it to crash. The whole team was there. The lander was released from the orbiter, maybe about midnight or so, and it came in by parachute. We had a large TV screen that we could watch with columns of numbers on it, and the last column showed the altitude of the lander above the surface of Mars. I clearly remember watching those numbers flash by. As the lander approached the surface, the numbers I saw were 1,300 feet, 600 feet, 50 feet, then there was absolute dead silence. I thought to myself, “Surely it crashed.” All of a sudden over the loudspeaker came “We have touchdown.” It was just so thrilling. Everybody stood still for a second and then there were cheers all over JPL. I have tried to convey this excitement in my book.

What are your memories of when the first results started coming in?

The Labeled Release experiment started on sol 10 [Viking’s 10th Martian day on the planet]. The first data came in around 7:30 in the evening. I was at the computer surrounded by Gil Levin and several other team members. I worked the keyboard and hit the print button. Then the computer printed the data points from the first nine hours of data. I looked at it and said, “Oh my God, it’s positive.” Not only was the instrument working, but the results were positive. That was quite a thrill. We rounded up the entire biology team to try to understand what it meant, because there was a press conference the next morning where we would report these results.

Were most of the team members thinking you’d found life?

Oh no. We weren’t convinced either. The experiment consisted of two parts: one was adding micronutrients to the active soil sample; the second involved heat-sterilizing a duplicate sample of the soil before adding the nutrients to theoretically kill any microbes that might be there. The difference between an active sample and the heat-sterilized control sample would define a positive response. So we had to wait for the next cycle, another 15 sols downstream, before we ran the control. The surprise was that the control was negative. That’s when the controversy really started.

The results met the pre-mission definition of a positive life response. But of course as soon as we got it everyone came up with alternative proposals to account for the results nonbiologically.

What did you think at this point?

I was pretty astounded, but very interested in these nonbiological hypotheses. What we could say at the time was that the result was consistent with a life response. I wasn’t ready to say we had a life response, especially not in view of all the objections.

We tried to think of some way to distinguish whether it was a biological or chemical response. We had heat-sterilized the control sample at 160 degrees centigrade. The suggestion came up that if we could somehow lower the sterilization temperature, we might enhance the biological explanation. If 50 degrees, say, killed the active response, that would be a strong indication that the positive response had been biological. Very few chemicals are destroyed by 50 degrees centigrade. However, we would expect such a low temperature to have a significant effect on Mars microbes because Mars is a much colder environment than Earth.

It turned out that two heaters were needed to reach 160 degrees. We estimated that using just one of them would heat the soil to about 50 degrees. When we did that on Mars, it significantly reduced the positive response. That was fairly strong evidence that the active response had been biological. However, there could be some chemical out there that does the same thing. Nobody has been able to find such a chemical, though.

Gil Levin has been outspoken in saying that the LR experiment found life on Mars. Do you agree?

Initially I didn’t. In the mid-’90s Gil decided that since nobody had found a suitable nonbiological agent, there was enough evidence to say we had discovered life on Mars. I didn’t agree with him. But when, four or five years later, more and more evidence was found for trace amounts of water on Mars, I began to agree that yes, we did find microbial life. The caveat is the lack of organic molecules. Some complex organics have been found on Mars, but they haven’t found simple organics like alanine and glycine [presumably required by life].

What do you think of the Mars missions that have followed Viking?

I’m disappointed that recent missions have not looked for life. They’ve studied the environment and its potential as a habitat. I just don’t understand it. They should have followed through with a second Viking mission to verify and further characterize the positive Labeled Release results.

Now they’re talking about Mars sample return missions and manned missions to Mars. While very exciting, I am concerned about the back-contamination problem. You can’t send people to Mars and return them without returning Mars soil to Earth. And it’s certainly a possibility that life does exist on Mars, whether or not the Labeled Release experiment found it. People really need to bear that in mind when they plan future missions. I think until we know more we should be very cautious about returning a sample.

What do you make of the continued controversy over your experiment’s findings?

I’d say it’s exciting. We might believe that we discovered life on Mars, but we won’t know the true answer for a long time. I would like to see more life detection experiments sent to Mars soon to either prove it or disprove it.

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What kind of experiments would a scientist do on Mars?

If we have people on Mars around 20, 25 years from now, what kind of scientific study would they be doing on a daily basis? I know places we'd want to study, places where ancient water flows might have been, but when samples are collected and taken back to the habitat, in what ways are these samples studied? What equipment is used? What kind of scientists would conduct these studies?

Keep in mind I'm quite a novice when it comes to this stuff - I know what a fume hood is and things like that but I'm not sure how things work when you go beyond the actual getting to Mars.

Edit: in this scenario, people have been on Mars for a decade. Thus most of the work (at least along the lines of basic adaptation to the Martian environment) has been done. What kind of meaningful science would still be conducted at this time?

Edit 2: I have realized my question more precisely is - how would this science be conducted? I have them doing stuff like collecting samples from the apron of a potential ancient water flow, so what kind of equipment would they have on the planet to analyze it, and how would they go about doing it? Remember this soil is no longer very precious. They've been on Mars for ten years.

• planetary-science
• scientific-data

• 3 $\begingroup$ Arguably, a scientist on Mars is the experiment $\endgroup$ –  BrendanLuke15 Commented Nov 1, 2021 at 15:06
• $\begingroup$ @BrendanLuke15, good point, but why that experiment should be done with a scientist? Why not a monk, or a poet? $\endgroup$ –  Ng Ph Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 18:00
• $\begingroup$ If people want to discuss this elsewhere, fine by me, but most people here don't seem interested in answering my question - that is, what human scientists, not robots, would be doing on the red planet a decade after a mars colony is founded. $\endgroup$ –  WasatchWind Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 18:06
• $\begingroup$ You added "this soil is no longer very precious. They have been on Mars for 10 years". What do you mean by "precious"? Do you mean that they have brought back to Earth enough samples that studying Mars geology in-situ is no longer of interest? IMO, you could have formulated your question as follows: assuming that travelling to, staying an extended time there, and go home from, Mars are no longer challenging, which scientific activities in-situ justify the presence of a scientist on Mars? $\endgroup$ –  Ng Ph Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 21:58
• $\begingroup$ @NgPh - what I mean is, it is not precious to the point that, while still experimenting on Mars, they are treating it like it's solid gold. This means that destructive methods of analysis are on the table. $\endgroup$ –  WasatchWind Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 22:02

3 Answers 3

There are a vast range of possibilities and it will not be possible to carry out everything at once so some will have to wait and take their turn. It's hard to know where to start but in no particular order here are a few examples:

Biochemists might want to look for life in water aquifers that are thought to exist deep underground. This could involve multiple samples from multiple sites and multiple depths with great efforts to prevent contamination. Materials extracted could be examined for the presence of DNA and other compounds that might be indicative of life such as amino acids and complex organic molecules. Analysis might use a DNA sequencer and a mass spectrophotometer. As with a lot of research it can be very dull and repetitive with hundreds of samples requiring the same treatment.

Paleontologists might want to look for micro fossils in a wide range of locations. This might be as simple as using a geologists hammer to break open likely looking rocks and a microscope to study them.

Geologists might be interested in characterizing and dating various features in the Martian terrain. This could involve samples from a range of areas as well as core samples from a range of depths. Analysis might involve a powerful microscope to look at crystal structure and a range of instruments such as x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence spectrophotometers to help identify the chemical composition. Note a range of radio-dating techniques are available other than those based on carbon https://openei.org/wiki/Rock_Lab_Analysis https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introchem/chapter/dating-using-radioactive-decay/

Materials scientists and technologists might be interested in developing manufacturing processes. For example making bricks out of regolith for use in construction of habitats, bunds or for radiation shielding. What type of regolith, particle size distribution and what additives might best be used for making the strongest bricks? And how much pressure is required to form the bricks? They might need a press for brick manufacture and testing, sieves and a range of additives. Others might be interested improving the solar cell efficiency or learning how best to extract nickel or iron from regolith perhaps using the MOND process or how to better detect and remove perchlorate contamination.

Biologists might be interested in studying how best to maintain and improve the biosphere that provides the water, oxygen and food that a base uses.

• $\begingroup$ Of all these scientists to choose from, which one would make the greatest breakthrough in science in the shortest time? $\endgroup$ –  Ng Ph Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 18:03
• $\begingroup$ Who can possibly say with any certainty? If anyone discovered existing life or even a fossilised form of life it would be a major break through. But the thing with Mars is the variety of possibilities. We shall have to wait and see. $\endgroup$ –  Slarty Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 23:36

It would be interesting to reframe the question: “What kinds of experiments on Mars require a scientist physically present on the surface?”

With a a very long list of research questions and a limited budget, it makes sense to choose the best return for the research dollar. Human-conducted research can be much more expensive, dangerous and challenging.

Even leaving scientists in orbit, to shorten communication delay and sample return times compared with Earth based research, could be advantageous.

Of course, if you have already decided to land scientists and they have unlimited funding, they would find lots to do.

• $\begingroup$ Yes, yes yes, I get it. My question was though, if we had boots on the ground, and not just initially, but a Martian base that had been running for like a decade, what kinds of experiments would we be doing there? $\endgroup$ –  WasatchWind Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 6:47
• $\begingroup$ Ya, it was a cheap shot. But I'm serious. I posted it as a formal question. $\endgroup$ –  Woody Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 21:59
• $\begingroup$ I also thought that your question is what the OP intended to ask. If it is not then the alternative I can see is that the OP wanted to ask: which scientific experiments can be done only on Mars, assuming that human presence is no longer an issue? $\endgroup$ –  Ng Ph Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 22:08
• $\begingroup$ @NgPh The fact of the matter is - I am writing a story about people on Mars in the 2040s, and worldbuilding stack exchange usually does not have people with the info I need. All I want to do is write a scene where a planetary scientist is conducting experiments on Mars and it feels like everyone is desperate to not give me the info I need. $\endgroup$ –  WasatchWind Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 19:03
• $\begingroup$ @WasatchWind, aha! But you are not being fair. Many here have been desperate to help but couldn't guess your real motivation. The brains in Space SE are wired differently than those in WB SE. If you re-edit your question you are likely to have exploitable answers. Otherwise, garbage-in-garbage-out ast we say. $\endgroup$ –  Ng Ph Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 19:42

Let's see... Mars' atmosphere is low pressure, very dry, you need to be healthy to go there and you (may) need assistance breathing (you are at risk for hypoxia) and serious thermal protection while outside (you'd die standing naked pretty quickly).

Where on Earth do we find scientists living in a place like that?

Source: Profesores y alumnos del Departamento de Construcción y Prevención de Riegos USM visitan Observatorio ALMA (google: "Teachers and students from the USM Department of Construction and Risk Prevention visit ALMA Observatory")

See also Canadian Researchers Collaborate with ALMA on the Health and Safety of Workers at High Altitude

Most of the scientists that are on-site actually sit at lower altitude, circa 2900 meters as opposed to 5050 meters where all the electronic goodies are (antennas, computer and electronics ) But there are plenty of folks who work daily at that altitude to maintain the system and dishes and to drive the dishes to different locations whenever the array is reconfigured)

Atmospheric water is the bane to short wavelength (millimeter wavelengths and shorter, all the way to infrared) radio astronomy. There's still the vibrational and rotational bands of N2, O2 and CO to worry about, but a second ALMA on mars, (MALMA, MLMA, ALMAM?) would be a wonderful idea. You could even to incredibly long baseline interferometry with Earth!

FYI to fact-check myself, I've just asked in Astronomy SE: How would the surface of Mars compare with the Atacama desert for millimeter wave (and shorter) radio astronomy?

• 1 $\begingroup$ Without a pressurized suit working on Mars would be impossible. The atmospheric pressure is only 6 mbar there. U2 pilots needed a suit at 20000 m or 165 mbar. Pressure at ALMA on 5050 m is 581 mbar, at 2900 m 729 mbar. Passenger airplanes with pressurized cabin get about 750 mbar. $\endgroup$ –  Uwe Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 0:48
• $\begingroup$ @Uwe thanks for the specifics! In order for A to be analogous to B, they must differ in some significant way, otherwise it's not an analogy. In both cases the human body must be covered and protected or quick death would ensue, it's just the "details" of the suit that's different; both are thermal, one also needs pressure. $\endgroup$ –  uhoh Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 0:52

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UPDATED: 10 Things for Mars 10

Scientists from around the world are gathering this week in California to take stock of the state of science from Mars and discuss goals for the next steps in exploration of the Red Planet. In the spirit of Mars 10, formally known as the 10 th International Conference on Mars , here are 10 recent significant events that got scientists talking:

DISCOVERY ALERT: A Fascinating Mars Rock

July 25, 2024: NASA's Perseverance rover, the six-wheeled geologist exploring Mars, found a fascinating rock that has some indications it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago, but further research is needed.

• " NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scientists Find Intriguing Mars Rock "

1. An International Science Fleet at Mars

July 2024: Nine spacecraft are now operating at Mars – two surface rovers and seven orbiters. NASA’s fleet includes the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, and orbiters MAVEN , Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , and Mars Odyssey .  ESA (European Space Agency) operates Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter . Both China and the United Arab Emirates also have spacecraft studying Mars from orbit.

• Mars Relay Network: Interplanetary Internet

2. Curiosity Discovers Mysterious Surge in Methane – Which Then Vanishes

June 2019 : NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found a surprising result: the largest amount of methane ever measured during the mission. “The methane mystery continues,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist. “We’re more motivated than ever to keep measuring and put our brains together to figure out how methane behaves in the Martian atmosphere.”

• “ Curiosity’s Mars Methane Mystery Continues ”

3. Curiosity Discovers Evidence of Ancient Wave Ripples From a Lake Bottom

February 2023 : NASA’s Curiosity rover team was surprised to discover the mission’s clearest evidence yet of ancient water ripples that formed within lakes in an area they expected to be much drier.

• “ NASA’s Curiosity Finds Surprise Clues to Mars’ Watery Past ”

4. InSight Detects First Quake on Another Planet

April 2019 : NASA's Mars InSight lander measured and recorded for the first time ever a "marsquake." "InSight's first readings carry on the science that began with NASA's Apollo missions," said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt. "We've been collecting background noise up until now, but this first event officially kicks off a new field: Martian seismology!"

• “ NASA’s InSight Detects First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars ”

5. InSight Provides First View of Mars’ Deep Interior

July 2021 : NASA’s InSight spacecraft’s seismometer revealed details about the planet’s deep interior for the first time, including confirmation that the planet’s center is molten.

• “ NASA’s InSight Reveals the Deep Interior of Mars ”

6. InSight Finds Stunning Impact on Mars – and Ice

October 2022 : NASA’s InSight felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater surrounded by boulder-sized chunks of ice from space.

• “ NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars ”

7. Opportunity Rover Comes to an End After Nearly 15 Years

July 2021 : One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA's Opportunity rover mission ended after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars and helping lay the groundwork for NASA's return to the Red Planet.

• “ NASA’s Opportunity Rover Mission on Mars Comes to End ”

8. Massive Dust Storm Spreads Across Mars

July 2018 : For scientists watching the Red Planet from NASA’s orbiters, summer 2018 was a windfall. “Global” dust storms, where a runaway series of storms create a dust cloud so large they envelop the planet, only appear every six to eight years (that’s 3-4 Mars years). In June 2018, one of these dust events rapidly engulfed the planet. Scientists first observed a smaller-scale dust storm on May 30. By June 20, it had gone global.

• “’ Storm Chasers’ on Mars Searching for Dusty Secrets”

9. NASA Maps Water Ice on Mars for Use by Future Astronauts

October 2023 : The map could help the agency decide where the first astronauts to the Red Planet should land. The more available water, the less missions will need to bring.

• “ NASA Is Locating Ice on Mars With This New Map ”

10. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Used to Make Massive Interactive Globe of Mars

April 2023 : Cliffsides, impact craters, and dust devil tracks are captured in mesmerizing detail in a new mosaic of the Red Planet composed of 110,000 images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

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