How Australian rocks will guide the Mars rover’s search for life – Brisbane Times

He said he was putting together a team to analyse data from tools on the rover which are looking for evidence of life around the crater.
Professor Flannery said they believed the rocks around the crater would resemble rocks found in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, which contain the fossilised remains of some of the earliest tiny life forms that existed on Earth.
It turns out that in north-west Australia we have the worlds best analogue for the Mars landing site, he said.
Therell be a group from QUT and hopefully from elsewhere in Australia as well overseen by me, analysing the data we get back, which will be elemental chemistry data giving us textures and composition of those rocks.
Scientists hope at least some of the rocks will be stromatolites – fossilised remains of microscopic organisms which would prove beyond a doubt that even if Mars can not currently support life, it could in the past.
If you look at the geology of Mars, there are a lot of features which suggest around 4 billion years ago it could have been much more like the Earth with rivers and lakes, and thats why were going to this landing site, because it has rocks that date from this period which havent been investigated previously, Professor Flannery said.
We assume if life was present on Mars 4 billion years ago it would have been microbial, and the theory is that it would have left traces like we find in the Pilbara.
Vanessa Zepeda, a doctoral student in astrobiology, will be working under Professor Flannery on the project.
She transferred to Brisbane from the US, where she was working at NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab earlier this year, to do her PhD with Professor Flannery.
The most exciting thing for me in doing astrobiology research is answering that profound question of whether or not life can arise somewhere else in our solar system, Ms Zepeda said.
I feel very, very lucky to be offered this opportunity to be involved with Mars research.
The data the team will analyse will come from a tool on the rover called PIXL, which was developed by Australian scientist and QUT alumnus Abigail Allwood.
The researchers will also identify other rock samples which will be isolated and prepared for transport back to Earth in a future mission.
Its a really ambitious mission, given its goals are search for microbial life and prepare samples to return to Earth, Professor Flannery said.
This is an opportunity to address the biggest question in science, potentially, and make one of the biggest scientific discoveries of all time.
Stuart Layt covers health, science and technology for the Brisbane Times. He was formerly the Queensland political reporter for AAP.

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