Martian territory

[emad]

If there is life on other planets, how will we find it? Marcus Chown meets a team of scientists in Chile who say they have the answer
08 June 2005


Picture the scene: a desolate, alien-looking plain, cowering beneath a blistering sun. In the middle of the plain a robotic vehicle, about the size of a Mini Cooper, is trundling along at a slow walking pace, as it has been ever since the sun came up a few hours ago. It stops at a scarred, wind-scuffed rock. Lights flash, cameras whirr. Then it moves on.

Cut to Mission Control, a darkened room in Pittsburgh. It's late evening. A dozen excited scientists crowd round monitors showing the wind-scuffed rock. The atmosphere is tense as they examine the image, pointing at spectral data scrolling down the side of the screen. Finally, a cheer goes up. It's official. They've found it - life on Earth!

Earth? Yes, the alien plain is actually in the Atacama Desert of Chile, probably the dryest place on Earth. You would be forgiven for thinking it was the surface of another planet - like Mars. But this is precisely the point: the scientists and engineers behind the robotic rover are testing the technology they hope will one day be used on a world like Mars.

"If you can't detect life in the most inhospitable place on Earth, what chance will you have on Mars?" says Alan Waggoner, an Atacama team member and the director of the Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Waggoner and his colleagues are one of several teams developing schemes to detect life on other worlds, with the backing of Nasa's Astep (Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets) programme.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=645180