The discovery of near surface ground ice by the Mars Odyssey mission and the abundant evidence for recent Gulley features observed by the Mars Global Surveyor mission support longstanding theoretical arguments for subsurface liquid water on Mars. Thus, implementing the Mars program goal to search for life points to drilling on Mars to reach liquid water, collecting samples and analyzing them with instrumentation to detect in situ organisms and biomarker compounds. Searching for life in the subsurface of Mars will require drilling, sample extraction and handling, and new technologies to find and identify biomarker compounds and search for living organisms. The MARTE project, an ASTEP field experiment, is exploring for a hypothesized subsurface anaerobic chemoautotrophic biosphere in the region of the Tinto River- or Rio Tinto- in southwestern Spain . It is also demonstrating technology needed to search for a subsurface biosphere on Mars. The project has as primary objectives: 1) To search for and characterize subsurface life at Rio Tinto along with the physical and chemical properties and sustaining energy sources of its environment. 2) To perform a high fidelity simulation of a robotic Mars drilling mission to search for life. 3) To demonstrate the drilling, sample handling, and instrument technologies relevant to searching for life on Mars. The simulation of the robotic drilling mission is guided by the results of the aseptic drilling campaign to search for life at Rio Tinto.

 

M.A.R.T.E. Overview

The MARTE project is developing drilling, sample handling, and instrument technologies relevant to searching for life in the Martian subsurface, and demonstrating them in a field test at a site with a Mars-analog subsurface biosphere on Earth. The drilling system is being developed by Honeybee robotics for future use on Mars. The drill brings to the surface 25 cm core segments at 2.5 cm diameter while operating on low power without the use of drilling fluids. An automated Core and Sample Handling facility will extract the cores from the drill and pass them to a suite of instruments on a lander platform. Cores are examined by remote sensing instruments including a panoramic context imager, microscopic imager, and a visible-near infrared hyperspectral imager. Sterile swab from each core is examined using ATP luminometry for a quick-look indication of the presence of living organisms. Logging instruments deployed in the borehole include a camera, magnetic susceptibility meter, and raman spectrometer. A science team located at a remote operations center analyzes the data from the logging instruments and selects core locations to extract subsamples with a life detection instrument located onboard the lander. Once subsample locations are chosen, a subsection of core is cut out, crushed, and then placed into the Signs Of Life Detector (SOLID) prototype life detection instrument for further processing. The SOLID is a portable automated instrument that uses protein microarray technology to detect microorganisms as well as their metabolic products. The instrument is capable of sensing many kinds of biochemical compounds (nucleic acids, proteins, polysaccharides, etc) using pre-printed microarrays, antibodies or any other protein or molecule able to recognize and bind specifically to them.

A Mars drilling mission simulation is planned for 2005 that includes interpretation of drill mission results by a remote science team in a blind test. The MARTE robotic drilling mission is augmented by additional “ground truth” with a team in the field utilizing more conventional methods for drilling, sample handling, and laboratory analysis to explore for a subsurface biosphere at the field site. This field experiment serves as a good analog for the activities of a human crew on Mars drilling in search of a subsurface biosphere. The MARTE project achieves exploration of an uncharacterized underground ecosystem of key relevance to Astrobiology and the search for life on Mars, while also developing and demonstrating technology needed in the next phase of Mars exploration.

Project News & Updates!!!

	MARTE goes SUBZERO! The resound success of the MARTE project in Spain will expand its capabilities by refining and developing drill technologies, sample handling techniques, and instrumentation relevant to future Mars exploration missions, and what better place than Antarctica! The new project, iMARTE, will also study the deposition and preservation of biosignatures in the icy subsurface of the Beacon Valley. More information on iMARTE coming soon. (iMARTE has been presented as an ASTEP proposal for CY 2006.)
	September 5th - September 30th 2005). Drilling operations reached a total depth of 6.057m achieving and exceeding the success criteria for the drill system. All of the MARTE subsystems succesfully demonstrated their capabilities in a field environment under very enduring conditions. The technology developed -and proven- will help in paving the road towards the next generation in sample extraction and sample processing for Mars exploration applications.
	August 29th - September 2nd, 2005. By this week the MARTE Mars Drilling Mission Simulation 2005 was fully underway with complete satellite communications and network infrastructure in place.
	August 22nd - 27th, 2005. Field site setup begins. In a period of one week the top of Pena del Hierro became a fully equipped work environment with the drill system, remote science instrumets, core sample handling system, and the borehole inspection system mounted on the DCSM and fully operational.
	August 15th - 19th, 2005. The main cargo load out of Ames and the drill system are transported from Moron Air Base (Spain) to the MARTE warehouse in Riotinto. A total of almost 5000 lb of cargo consisting of MARTE systems, auxiliary equipment, and consumable supplies .
	August 8th - 12th, 2005. Test drilling operations at Las Zarandas yielded results which eliminated that site as a candidate for the mission simmulation. Las Zarandas turned out to be a "sandbox" with a 25cm rock-like crust all around. Once the drill breached the hard surface the drill bit "sunk" slowly by its own weight; no need to even spin the drill nor apply a downward load was required.

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