NASA is working with its international partners to study the ancient Earth as it relates to Mars.
In June 2023, NASA's Mars Exploration Program leaders joined their counterparts from the Australian Space Agency, ESA (European Space Agency), and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) on a field expedition to visit some of the oldest convincing evidence of life on Earth.
"This science expedition was a great opportunity for NASA to work with our international partners to study the ancient Earth as it relates to Mars, which may have had a similar past," said Eric Ianson, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The more we learn about our planet's evolution, the more we can apply that knowledge to our characterization of the Red Planet."
The Pilbara in the Western Australian Outback is one of the few places in the world to hold an ancient geological record of our ancient planet. As the international community continues working together to study Mars and prepare for samples to bring to Earth, these teams explored what our own backyard can teach us about the search for life elsewhere.
"What we're looking at here in Western Australia are known as stromatolites," said Mitch Schulte, program scientist for the Mars Perseverance Rover at NASA Headquarters. "They're fossils caused by mats of microorganisms living around 3.5 billion years ago that had their presence captured and preserved in the rock record for all this time."
Due to the geological processes that continually reshape and recycle the Earth's surface, it is extremely difficult for stromatolites or other fossils to be preserved on Earth for long periods of time, so only a fraction of past life remains in the geological record. In the Pilbara region, the rock record was able to stay intact over billions of years, resulting in outcrops of geology that match the same age as we see on much of the surface of Mars. This makes the location a critical testing ground for scientists and engineers to hone their skills for identifying signs of life in ancient environments.
The international delegation spent the week-long expedition to the Pilbara considering the difficulties of locating fossil evidence and how our missions are using techniques, including making detailed contextual measurements, to overcome such challenges. Discussions centered on how challenging it is to find and confirm signs of past life in ancient rocks, even on a planet like Earth, where life is known to have gained a foothold.
"To be able to prove that a feature is biogenic, not only do you need to be able to prove that life can create it, but you also need to be able to prove that the particular version of the feature was not created by something else," says Lindsay Hays, deputy lead scientist for Mars Sample Return and Program Scientist for Astrobiology at NASA Headquarters. "You have to understand what else is going on in the historical record of the rock section to be able to understand what you're looking at."
A central theme of the field workshop was the importance of geological context when choosing sampling sites and eventually confirming the integrity of a sample's biological origin. The Pilbara is the perfect classroom for teams to study stromatolites that have withstood the test of time and scientific rigor and understand what they might be looking for on Mars. The group investigated how the environment in which these signs of ancient life were found could have been conducive or unfavorable to biology taking shape.
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NASA recently conducted an international field expedition in the Pilbara region of Western Australia in June 2023 in order to study the ancient Earth and its relation to Mars. The Pilbara region is one of the few places in the world where an ancient geological record of our planet exists and the international community is seeking to gain more insight into the search for life on other planets. During the expedition, the team studied stromatolites, fossils caused by mats of microorganisms that lived around
3.5 billion years ago. The geological processes on Earth have made it difficult for stromatolites and other fossils to be preserved for long periods of time, so the geological record in the Pilbara region was a special find. This expedition provides NASA with the opportunity to apply knowledge of planet evolution to their characterization of Mars and its potential for life. The exploration of the ancient Earth and its potential implications for Mars has been a topic of international interest for the past 25 years. In the mid-1990s, the Mars Pathfinder mission was launched to collect data on the surface and atmosphere of Mars and the Mars Global Surveyor mission was launched in the late 1990s to map the surface of the planet. In the 2000s, the Mars Exploration Rover mission was launched to study the Martian landscape and search for evidence of past life on the planet. The latest NASA mission, the Mars Perseverance Rover, is currently on its way to Mars and will further investigate the planet’s potential for life. The expedition to the Pilbara region is the latest step in NASA’s continuing efforts to explore Mars and better understand the conditions and potential for life on the Red Planet.
Investigative
Question:
- 1. What additional knowledge has been gained from the expedition to the Pilbara region?
- 2. How has the exploration of Mars evolved in the past 25 years?
- 3.
What other geological regions on Earth are being studied for potential insights into the search for life on other planets? 4. What technologies are being used to further investigate the potential for life on Mars?
5. What other international space agencies are involved in the exploration of Mars?
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