help Mars rover track extraterrestrial life

Chemical guidebook may help Mars rover track extraterrestrial life

To help a NASA rover eventually hunt for life on Mars, Idaho National Laboratory scientists are writing a chemical guidebook to aid the search for extraterrestrial life. Using new imaging tools and earthly parallels of ancient Mars environments, they're recording the types of subtle chemical changes that Martian microbes may have left on the planet's rocks. The researchers hope someday to arm a Mars rover with a suite of tools – a guidebook, precise chemical imagers, and human-like reasoning ability – and let it search for signs of alien life on its own.

[Reuel Smith, 208/526-3733,mrs@inel.gov