Earth’s most arid desert may hold a key to finding life on Mars. Diverse microbes discovered in the clay-rich, shallow soil layers in Chile’s dry Atacama Desert suggest that similar deposits below the Martian surface may contain microorganisms, which could be easily found by future rover missions or landing craft.
Led by Cornell University and Spain’s Centro de AstrobiologÃa, scientists now offer a planetary primer to identifying microbial markers on shallow rover digs in Martian clay, in their work published Nov. 5 in Nature Scientific Reports.
In that dry environment at Atacama,...
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