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The search for extraterrestrial life has always been a key motivator of space exploration. But if we were to search Mars, Titan, or the subsurface oceans of Europa or Enceladus, it seems like all we can reasonably hope to find is extremophile microbes. And microbes, just a few microns long and wide, will be difficult to identify if we’re relying on robots working with limited human supervision and without all the fancy life-detecting gear we have here on Earth.
To solve that problem, a team of German researchers at the Technical University in Berlin figured that, instead of having a robot looking for microbes, it would be easier and cheaper to make the microbes come to the robot. The only ingredient they were lacking was the right bait.
Looking for movement
Most ideas we have for life detection on space mission rely on looking for chemical traces of life, such as various metabolites. Most recent missions, the Perseverance rover included, weren’t equipped with any specialized life-detecting instruments. “On Mars, the focus was on looking for signs of possible ancient life—fossils or other traces of microbes,” says Max Riekeles, an astrobiologist at the Technical University Berlin. “The last real in-situ life detection missions were performed by Viking landers, which is quite a while back already,”
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To solve that problem, a team of German researchers at the Technical University in Berlin figured that, instead of having a robot looking for microbes, it would be easier and cheaper to make the microbes come to the robot. The only ingredient they were lacking was the right bait.
Looking for movement
Most ideas we have for life detection on space mission rely on looking for chemical traces of life, such as various metabolites. Most recent missions, the Perseverance rover included, weren’t equipped with any specialized life-detecting instruments. “On Mars, the focus was on looking for signs of possible ancient life—fossils or other traces of microbes,” says Max Riekeles, an astrobiologist at the Technical University Berlin. “The last real in-situ life detection missions were performed by Viking landers, which is quite a while back already,”
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