What sort of life could Mars have supported?

The principal purpose of the NASA rover Curiosity ’s mission on Mars is to ascertain whether the Red Planet ever had an environs conducive to microbic living and to find the chemical building blocks of living . The spot that was chosen for Curiosity ’s landing , the 3.8 billion twelvemonth onetime Gale Crater , is situated near the planet ’s equator . It is an area rich   in mineral that form in the presence of water and Curiosity is searching for conditions that could be contributing to extremophile lifeforms .

So whereabouts on Earth would you find an environment like to ancient Mars ? The Dry Valleys of Antarctica are considered by many to have the most Mars - like conditions of anywhere on Earth . investigator have founddiverse liveliness formsdating back nearly a hundred thousand years   in subglacial lake sediments in Antarctica and have give away microbic life within the frozen brine ofLake Vida , also in Antarctica .

Another location on Earth that could show what type of life there could be on Mars is Chile ’s Atacama Desert . The Desert has been one of the driest , most inhospitable berth on Earth for the last twenty million years . But researchers from Spain ’s Centre of Astrobiology and Chile ’s Catholic University of the North have expose germ even in this unforgiving terrain , more than 1.8 metres below the surface of Atacama ’s hypersaline substrates . The bacterium and archaea microorganisms survive on salt and moisture trapped by the formations ; they boom without any oxygen or sun .

The researchers used SOLID ( Signs of Life Detector ) , which apply a biochip loaded with up to 450 antibody which can be used to identify varieties of biological stuff , include deoxyribonucleic acid and saccharide .   The microorganism have been found developing in a home ground rich in halite and other extremely hygroscopic compounds ( anhydrite and perchlorate ) that absorb water . saline solution deposits areknown to live on Marsso it is not a vast saltation to think that hypersaline environments may also exist underground there . One of the impediments to potential Martian life is that of the low temperature ; this would not be a job if the substrate are of sufficiently mellow saline contentedness as the freezing degree of water then lower to -20 point Celsius .