..::Ambifood::.. Projecto Rio Tinto

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Projecto Rio Tinto

Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment

The MARTE Project on Nature!!!

The discovery of near surface ground ice by the Mars Odyssey mission and the abundant evidence for recent Gulley features observed by the Mars Global Surveyor mission support longstanding theoretical arguments for subsurface liquid water on Mars. Thus, implementing the Mars program goal to search for life points to drilling on Mars to reach liquid water, collecting samples and analyzing them with instrumentation to detect in situ organisms and biomarker compounds. Searching for life in the subsurface of Mars will require drilling, sample extraction and handling, and new technologies to find and identify biomarker compounds and search for living organisms. The MARTE project, an ASTEP field experiment, is exploring for a hypothesized subsurface anaerobic chemoautotrophic biosphere in the region of the Tinto River- or Rio Tinto- in southwestern Spain . It is also demonstrating technology needed to search for a subsurface biosphere on Mars. The project has as primary objectives: 1] To search for and characterize subsurface life at Rio Tinto along with the physical and chemical properties and sustaining energy sources of its environment. 2] To perform a high fidelity simulation of a robotic Mars drilling mission to search for life. 3] To demonstrate the drilling, sample handling, and instrument technologies relevant to searching for life on Mars. The simulation of the robotic drilling mission is guided by the results of the aseptic drilling campaign to search for life at Rio Tinto.

M.A.R.T.E. Overview

The MARTE project is developing drilling, sample handling, and instrument technologies relevant to searching for life in the Martian subsurface, and demonstrating them in a field test at a site with a Mars-analog subsurface biosphere on Earth. The drilling system is being developed by Honeybee robotics for future use on Mars. The drill brings to the surface 25 cm core segments at 2.5 cm diameter while operating on low power without the use of drilling fluids. An automated Core and Sample Handling facility will extract the cores from the drill and pass them to a suite of instruments on a lander platform. Cores are examined by remote sensing instruments including a panoramic context imager, microscopic imager, and a visible-near infrared hyperspectral imager. Sterile swab from each core is examined using ATP luminometry for a quick-look indication of the presence of living organisms. Logging instruments deployed in the borehole include a camera, magnetic susceptibility meter, and raman spectrometer. A science team located at a remote operations center analyzes the data from the logging instruments and selects core locations to extract subsamples with a life detection instrument located onboard the lander. Once subsample locations are chosen, a subsection of core is cut out, crushed, and then placed into the Signs Of Life Detector [SOLID] prototype life detection instrument for further processing. The SOLID is a portable automated instrument that uses protein microarray technology to detect microorganisms as well as their metabolic products. The instrument is capable of sensing many kinds of biochemical compounds [nucleic acids, proteins, polysaccharides, etc] using pre-printed microarrays, antibodies or any other protein or molecule able to recognize and bind specifically to them.

A Mars drilling mission simulation is planned for 2005 that includes interpretation of drill mission results by a remote science team in a blind test. The MARTE robotic drilling mission is augmented by additional? ground truth? with a team in the field utilizing more conventional methods for drilling, sample handling, and laboratory analysis to explore for a subsurface biosphere at the field site. This field experiment serves as a good analog for the activities of a human crew on Mars drilling in search of a subsurface biosphere. The MARTE project achieves exploration of an uncharacterized underground ecosystem of key relevance to Astrobiology and the search for life on Mars, while also developing and demonstrating technology needed in the next phase of Mars exploration.

Remote Science Instruments

Core Outer Surface Biology Sampling:

The external surface of all received cores will be sampled and tested for the presence of adenosine triphospahte [ATP] [via bioluminescence] with the Lightning MVP instrument [manufactured by BioControl Systems Inc.] The Lightning MVP instrument uses a Luciferin-luciferase reagent to react with ATP to emit light. A cotton swab is swept across the surface of a core, then placed into a chamber where a reagent is added then the swab is exposed to a UV light. The reagent causes fluorescence in proportion to the amount of ATP present. The reading takes about 10s and it is measured in relative light units [RLU]. The MVP instrument has a sensitivity of 15 Pico-grams of ATP. ATP is the energy mechanism for all living organisms so ATP luminometry is used as a screening instrument to determine the level of bacterial bioburden present on the cores. In MARTE it will provide a "quick look" assay for the presence of bacteria in cores.