. 24/7 Space News .
EXO WORLDS
Detecting Life in the Driest Place on Earth
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 21, 2017


"At high temperatures, water has the ability to dissolve the organic compounds from the soil," Kehl said. "Think of a tea bag: in cold water, not much happens. But when you add hot water, the tea releases an entire bouquet of molecules that gives the water a particular flavor, color and smell."

Few places are as hostile to life as Chile's Atacama Desert. It's the driest place on Earth, and only the hardiest microbes survive there. Its rocky landscape has lain undisturbed for eons, exposed to extreme temperatures and radiation from the sun.

If you can find life here, you might be able to find it in an even harsher environment - like the surface of Mars. That's why a team of researchers from NASA and several universities visited the Atacama in February. They spent 10 days testing devices that could one day be used to search for signs of life on other worlds. That group included a team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, working on a portable chemistry lab called the Chemical Laptop.

With just a small water sample, the Laptop can check for amino acids, the organic molecules that are widespread in our solar system and considered the building blocks of all life as we know it. Liquid-based analysis techniques have been shown to be orders of magnitude more sensitive than gas-based methods for the same kinds of samples. But when you scoop up a sample from Mars, the amino acids you're looking for will be trapped inside of or chemically bonded to minerals.

To break down those bonds, JPL has designed another piece of technology, a subcritical water extractor that would act as the "front end" for the Laptop. This extractor uses water to release the amino acids from a soil sample, leaving them ready to be analyzed by the Chemical Laptop.

"These two pieces of technology work together so that we can search for biosignatures in solid samples on rocky or icy worlds," said Peter Willis of JPL, the project's principal investigator. "The Atacama served as a proving ground to see how this technology would work on an arid planet like Mars."

To find life, just add water
Willis' team revisited an Atacama site he first went to in 2005. At that time, the extractor he used was manually operated; in February, the team used an automated extractor designed by Florian Kehl, a postdoctoral researcher at JPL.

The extractor ingests soil and regolith samples and mixes them with water. Then, it subjects the samples to high pressure and temperature to get the organics out.

"At high temperatures, water has the ability to dissolve the organic compounds from the soil," Kehl said. "Think of a tea bag: in cold water, not much happens. But when you add hot water, the tea releases an entire bouquet of molecules that gives the water a particular flavor, color and smell."

To remove the amino acids from those minerals, the water has to get much hotter than your ordinary cup of tea: Kehl said the extractor is currently able to reach temperatures as high as 392 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius).

Liquid samples would be more readily available on ocean worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa, Kehl said. There, the extractor might still be necessary, as amino acids could be bonded to minerals mixed into the ice. They also may be present as part of larger molecules, which the extractor could break into smaller building blocks before analyzing them with the Chemical Laptop. Once the extractor has prepared its samples, the Laptop can do its work.

NASA's own tricorder
The Chemical Laptop checks liquid samples for a set of 17 amino acids - what the team refers to as "the Signature 17." By looking at the types, amounts and geometries of these amino acids in a sample, it's possible to infer the presence of life.

"All these molecules 'like' being in water," said Fernanda Mora of JPL, the Chemical Laptop's lead scientist. "They dissolve in water and they don't evaporate easily, so they're much easier to detect in water."

The Laptop mixes liquid samples with a fluorescent dye, which attaches to amino acids and makes it possible to detect them when illuminated by a laser.

Then, the sample is injected onto a separation microchip. A voltage is applied between the two ends of the channel, causing the amino acids to move at different speeds towards the end, where the laser is shining. Amino acids can be identified by how quickly they move through the channel. As the molecules pass through the laser, they emit light that is used to quantify how much of each amino acid is present.

"The idea is to automate and miniaturize all the steps you would do manually in a chemistry lab on Earth," Mora said. "That way, we can do the same analyses on another world simply by sending commands with a computer."

The near-term goal is to integrate the extractor and Chemical Laptop into a single, automated device. It would be tested during future field campaigns to the Atacama Desert with a team of researchers led by Brian Glass of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

"These are some of the hardest samples to analyze you can get on the planet," Mora said of the team's work in the Atacama. She added that in the future, the team wants to test this technology in icy environments like Antarctica. Those could serve as analogs to Europa and other ocean worlds, where liquid samples would be more readily plentiful.

EXO WORLDS
Lack of Oxygen Not a Showstopper For Life
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Apr 20, 2017
The hot springs of Yellowstone National Park may be extreme environments, but they are host to a diversity of microbes that could shed light on the evolution of life on Earth and, perhaps, what lurks on distant planets. While photosynthetic life cannot tolerate the high temperatures of hot springs, microorganisms that are chemosynthetic - meaning they rely solely on chemicals, rather than ... read more

Related Links
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Lands Beyond Beyond - extra solar planets - news and science
Life Beyond Earth


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


Comment using your Disqus, Facebook, Google or Twitter login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

EXO WORLDS
'Better you than me,' Trump tells record-breaking astronaut

Cygnus docks with ISS, delivering 28 Cubesats from multiple customers

Orbital cargo ship arrives at space station

Russian, American two-man crew reaches ISS

EXO WORLDS
India to Launch Carrier Rocket With Higher Payload Capacity in May

Aerojet Rocketdyne completes qualification tests on reusable rocket engine

Russian MoD to Further Develop Plesetsk Cosmodrome Infrastructure

Airbus Safran Launchers initiates production of the Ariane 6 ground qualification models

EXO WORLDS
Danish Martian Experts Get Their Hands on a Piece of 'Black Beauty'

New Look at 2004's Martian Hole-in-One Site

Researchers Produce Detailed Map of Potential Mars Rover Landing Site

Mars Rover Opportunity Leaves 'Tribulation'

EXO WORLDS
Are human space babies conceivable?

China's first cargo spacecraft docks with space lab

China launches first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1

Tianzhou-1 space truck soars into orbit

EXO WORLDS
Airbus and Intelsat team up for more capacity

Commercial Space Operators To Canada: "We're Here, and We can Help"

Antenna Innovation Benefits the Government Customer

Ukraine in talks with ESA to become member

EXO WORLDS
MIT engineers manipulate water using only light

NIST method sees through concrete to detect early-stage corrosion

Berkeley Lab scientists discover new atomically layered, thin magnet

A plastic-eating caterpillar

EXO WORLDS
Detecting Life in the Driest Place on Earth

In experiments on Earth, testing possible building blocks of alien life

Newly Discovered Exoplanet May be Best Candidate in Search for Signs of Life

Breakthrough Listen Publishes Initial Results

EXO WORLDS
ALMA investigates 'DeeDee,' a distant, dim member of our solar system

Nap Time for New Horizons

Hubble spots auroras on Uranus

Cold' Great Spot discovered on Jupiter









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.