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Target
The nodular opaline silica deposits with digitate protrusions discovered by the Spirit rover around Home Plate in the Columbia Hills (pictured above, credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech), represent the most significant target in the search for life on Mars. This is because we know that morphologically identical deposits on Earth not only form in the presence of microbial activity, but are able to preserve textural and elemental evidence of biogenicity (proof of life) for hundreds of millions of years. Moreover, research on 3.5 billion-year-old Western Australian microbial fossils show that these ancient deposits flourished in the presence of hot springs, and research on the origin of life has shown that hot springs are the most likely setting for life to have started on Earth, and possibly, on Mars.
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WA Analogues
In June 2023, LifeSpringsMars Program Director Prof. Martin Van Kranendonk led members from NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, the European Space Agency, the Australian Space Agency, and CSIRO on a field expedition to the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Here in the remote Australian outback, Martin showed the team a series of ancient stromatolite fossils that are 2.7 to 3.5 billion years old. The most ancient of these fossils are considered the oldest, most convincing evidence of life on Earth, and studying them is helping planetary scientists in their search for life on Mars.
To understand if life ever formed on Mars and where we might find it, we need to first understand Earth’s record of early life and its environments. Analogue environments from the Pilbara region of Western Australia provide planetary scientists with an opportunity to gain insights into the off-world environments they would explore on Mars, beyond the remote imaging and data returned by robotic missions.
During the week-long expedition, the international delegation discussed how they could overcome the challenges of locating and analysing possible fossilised evidence on Mars, using what they learnt from studying the stromatolite fossils of the Pilbara.
