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ZL2VAL > TECHNO 18.03.05 12:22l 86 Lines 3575 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 520922ZL2VAL
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Subj: Rover finds life on Earth
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Sent: 050318/0953Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:59166 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : TECHNO@WW
*Robot Finds Life in Desert, Mimicking Skills Needed on Mars *
By Tariq Malik
Staff Writer
posted: 15 March 2005
11:59 am ET
A robot laden with sensor equipment has detected life on the arid
terrain of the Chilean desert, a first for rover-based systems.
Nobody was surprise to find life there, but with the harsh conditions
and sparse biological activity, the feat is likened to finding microbial
creatures on Mars if any exists there.
Zoe, a four-wheeled automaton built to scan for living organisms, found
evidence of bacterial colonies and lichens living among the rocks of
Chile's Atacama Desert.
"Our life detection system worked very well, and something like it
ultimately may enable robots to look for life on Mars," said Alan
Waggoner, an Atacama study team member and director of the Molecular
Biosensor and Imaging Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are currently exploring the
red planet, but they are not equipped to make the specific measurements
needed for life detection.
Developed by the Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, Zoe borrows its
name from the Greek word for "life." The robot is part of a three-year
Life in the Atacama project at the Astrobiology Science and Technology
Program for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) to understand how life can be
detected by remotely-operated rovers.
"We saw very clear signals from chlorophyll, DNA and protein," Waggoner
said, adding that researchers also found visual evidence of biological
materials from images taken by Zoe's cameras. "Taken together, these
four pieces of evidence are strong indicators of life."
The research was presented this week at the 36th Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Nathalie Cabrol, a planetary
scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, led the study.
Zoe stands just over three feet (one meter) tall and carries a
fluorescence imager on its undercarriage to detect
chlorophyll-based-life like the cyanobacteria in lichens. The instrument
can also pick up signals from fluorescent dyes that light up when they
connect with nucleic acids, proteins and other life-relevant molecules.
"Our fluorescent imager is the first such system to work in daylight
while in the shade of the rover," Waggoner said, adding that sunlight
can ruin the light-sensitive life detections.
A spectrometer aboard the rover also looked for evidence of chlorophyll
in the visible and near-infrared range of the light spectrum.
Zoe searched for signs of life in coastal and inland region of the
Atacama Desert between August and October of 2004. Researchers
controlled the rover from a remote operations center in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania while a ground team accompanied Zoe across Atacama,
retrieving samples of regions where the robot made a life-detection for
later verification in a laboratory.
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73, Alan
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