The environment on Mars can be as harsh as Chile’s Atacama Desert, which is known to be the driest place on earth.
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is the driest place on the planet, living things are very poor, rare. However, a closer look at microbial life in the vast hot desert could provide clues as to how bacteria spread across the Martian surface.
Atacama has long been the only place on Earth similar to Mars’ harsh environment, and scientists often use the desert to study the possibility of life on the Red Planet. A recent study found that bacteria travel in dust particles in the Atacama Desert, carried by the wind from distant places.
“We wanted to see how the microorganisms got here, where to start,” said Armando Azua-Bustos, researcher in the Department of Geology and Habitatology at the Biological Center in Madrid and author of the study at Space. Mr Azua-Bustos said he considered the desert his childhood home, as he grew up and lived in northern Chile for 20 years – a major advantage over other Atacama researchers.
Although he has spent years studying the desert and its implications for Mars, Azua-Bustos says the findings of the most recent study still surprise him. “In a place known to have very low levels of live bacteria, I doubt we would find them anywhere in the desert,” he said.
The team of scientists collected 23 species of bacteria and eight species of fungi from three sampling sites in two regions of Atacama. They then discovered that some of the bacterial and fungal species collected were native to the Pacific coast and could have been blown to the Atacama. The results suggest that microbial life can indeed pass through the drier part of the desert and spread to the surface of a similar area.
“We realize that life uses dust as a means of transport, driven by the wind,” compared Mr. Azua-Bustos.
The researchers suggest that microbial life on Mars could also spread over great distances, despite the planet’s extreme drought, through winds and dust storms that cover the entire surface. In addition, humanity may also have sent microbes from Earth to Mars via various landers and spacecraft that explored the Red Planet.
