Life Sciences Commons^™

Fatty Acid Recovery And Identification In Mars Analogue Soil Samples, Kimberly E. Lykens

STAR Program Research Presentations

A primary goal of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is to gather and store samples of Mars soil that could possibly be returned to Earth in a future mission for investigations into past or present life. In years leading up to a potential sample return mission on Mars and potentially other worlds, samples taken from Chile’s Atacama Desert, the most arid, biologically limited desert in the world, are valuable in developing a capacity for biosignature detection, specifically when exploring fatty acid abundance. Eighteen samples were collected from two sites in the Atacama characterized by biological soil crusts (BSC). BSCs are areas …

Preservation Of Biosignature Molecules In Potential Sample Return Container Of The Mars 2020 Mission, Kimberly E. Lykens, Fei Chen Ph.D

STAR Program Research Presentations

Preservation of Biosignature Molecules in Potential Sample Return Container of the Mars 2020 Mission

Kimberly Lykens¹ and Fei Chen²

¹Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio 45501 ²Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, 91109

One requirement for sustainable life on terrestrial planets includes the presence of organic polymers, compounds that are essential for major biological functions such as replication and catalysis. An identified goal of the Mars mission in the year 2020 is to implement a sample-return to identify and validate signs of life on Mars through the discovery of biosignature molecules in Martian core samples. Martian core samples recovered …