Dr. Janice Bishop - Principal Investigator
ResearchSETI researchers: Clays found in ancient rocks provide window into fascinating early wet epoch of Mars. A paper in Science by planetary scientist Janice Bishop and colleagues describes the clay-rich rocks found at Mawrth Vallis, a potential landing site for future rovers (http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/). These results suggest that abundant water was present on Mars at one time and that hydrothermal activity may have occurred. 
Analysis of MRO(http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/)/CRISM (http://crism.jhuapl.edu/) images shows a border of Fe2
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material in between Fe3+ and Al clays. This shows an active early chemistry in these ancient Martian rocks. A layer of Fe2+ clays on top of Fe3+ clays indicates reduction of Fe3+ that is typically associated with organic material or microbial activity on Earth. Download a video here | | | | | | | Students | | Mario Parente, Ph.D. candidate, Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University |  | | Nancy McKeown, Ph.D. candidate, Geology Department, University of Santa Cruz |  | | Heather Makarewicz, M.S. candidate, Mathematics Department, University of Kansas |
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Projects
“Biosphere of Mars: Ancient and Recent Studies (BioMars)” Mars is an exciting, and comparatively accessible target for astrobiological studies aimed at detection of current or past extraterrestrial life. We are analyzing the evolution of the Martian hydrosphere and surface topography to understand the history of water distribution and investigate atmospheric processes that may have contributed to a UV shield. Our goal is to identify the types of sites on Mars that experienced long-term fluid flow and may be, or have been, conducive to life. We characterize biomes that develop in analogous Earth environments, conduct experiments to determine limitations for life in these habitats, and identify features that constitute indicators of life. We propose robot-based sampling and in situ analyses of terrestrial sites so as to develop methods for dealing with the challenges of remote geomicrobiological investigations. Our work will provide constraints for selection of optimal sites for future Mars exploration and methods for sample analysis, and ultimately will be relevant to the question ‘did life evolve elsewhere in the universe’. The portion of this project led by Co-I Bishop involves remote characterization of the mineralogy of Mars including providing constraints on the mineralogy and physical properties of materials in channels on the Martian surface. The in situ spectral measurements are performed using visible/IR reflectance spectrometers in the lab and in the field of minerals and Mars analog materials. These spectra are convolved to the spectral resolution of OMEGA on Mars Express and CRISM on MRO for comparison with those instruments. Spectral image analyses are underway in order to identify minerals on Mars associated with living systems. For this project there is an emphasis on Fe- and S-bearing minerals. SETI Grant # 325 via a subcontract from University of California Berkeley, NASA funding from the NAI.
“Taking Apart the Rocks of Mars” Evaluation of the mineralogy of the surface of Mars is a fundamental goal of Mars exploration and is a requirement for understanding geological processes active on the surface. Remote sensing techniques, principally visible/near-IR and mid-IR spectroscopy, are the primary tools used to achieve this goal, supplemented by in-situ analyses including Mössbauer spectroscopy. This project involves identifying and investigating the diagnostic properties of a suite of mineral separates from actual Martian meteorites using a wide range of spectroscopic techniques in a systematic and integrated manner. This set of well-constrained diagnostic properties of Mars materials (coupled with existing spectral data for terrestrial materials and Mars analogues) form a consistent and reliable foundation upon which to explore the mineralogy of Mars with a host of sensors active or soon to be active at Mars. Co-I Bishop is focusing on linking the mineral structure to specific vibrational absorption bands observed in the infrared spectra of several silicate minerals. SETI Grant # 324 via a subcontract from Brown University, NASA funding from MFR program.
"Martian Surface Composition and its Practical Applications to Astrobiology" NNA05CS53A Martian surface alteration processes are under study through analysis of spectral, magnetic and chemical data from Mars and analysis of analogue materials in the laboratory. The kinds of Mars surface analogues studied include Martian meteorites, volcanic tephra, sediments from the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica and hydrothermal rocks. Pure minerals, such as iron oxides, sulfates, carbonates and silicates, found in these samples are studied, as well, in order to better characterize and identify them or related materials on Mars. Many of these minerals are associated with organisms and may be useful as indicators of life or environments supportive of life on Mars or other planets. An important component of studying alteration processes on Mars is addressing the question of chemical alteration and water. There has been much speculation about the presence of water on Mars based on geomorphology. Many kinds of chemical alteration require liquid water, and hence, identification of minerals produced through aqueous processes would provide another line of evidence for the putative liquid water on Mars. Identifying minerals and/or processes requiring the presence of water will have important implications for Astrobiology on Mars. A number of the minerals and phases studied as potential Mars analogue materials contain nanophase components and will utilize new forms of nanotechnology. These materials may have formed through alteration of volcanic material or precipitation in hydrothermal springs. Nanophase silicate fragments and/or ferric oxides and hydroxides frequently comprise these materials and are consistent with many of the properties of the dust on Mars. Research covered by this Cooperative Agreement includes characterizing the spectral, chemical and structural properties of nanophase silicate and oxide minerals. The primary task under this Cooperative Agreement is for work funded by Dr. Bishop as a Co-I on the CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars) team, where Dr. Bishop is leading the spectral identification tasks related to hydrated minerals and surface alteration. Additional tasks are for work funded through the ASTID and MFR programs. Tasks in this Coop also involve the design and construction of instruments for Mars missions in collaboration with Dr. David Blake, via subcontracts with Apparati, Inc. and InXitu.
“Planetary Biology, Evolution and Intelligence” NNA04CC05A We ask three fundamental questions: (1) How does life begin and evolve; (2) Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? and (3) What is the future of life on Earth and beyond? We conduct a set of coupled research projects in the co-evolution of life and its planetary environment, beginning with fundamental ancient transitions that ultimately made complex life possible on Earth, and conclude with a project that brings together many of these investigations into an examination of the suitability of planets orbiting M stars for either single-celled or more complex life. Results will help the next generation scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) choose the 105 to 106 target stars that it will survey for signs of technical civilizations using the new Allen Telescope Array (ATA) being built by the SETI Institute in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. This research, sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, intends to elucidate the co-evolution of life and its planetary environment, typically investigating global-scale processes that have shaped, and been shaped by, both. Throughout, we recognize the importance of pursuing the planetary evolution aspects of this research in the context of comparative planetology: since laboratory experiments are impossible over some of the time and spatial scales relevant to early Earth, we must supplement laboratory data with the insight as we can gain by exploring extraterrestrial environments that may provide partial analogs to the early Earth environment and its processes. We will be exploring two new investigations into the oxidation of early Earths environment. While the biological aspects of this ‘oxygen transition’ have been recently emphasized, both mechanisms to be explored here (peroxy in rocks and aerosol formation in the atmosphere, building on an analogy to processes now occurring in the atmosphere of Saturns moon Titan) are non-biological. If such mechanisms were to be shown to be quantitatively significant, it would suggest that the oxygen transition on an Earth-like world could take place independently of the invention of any particular metabolic pathways (such as photosynthesis or methanogenesis) that have been proposed as driving this transition. Since Earth’s oxygen transition ultimately set the stage for the oxygen-based metabolism evidently essential for metazoa, understanding this transition is crucial to elucidating both Earth’s evolution and the evolution of complex (including intelligent) life. Our geological investigations are tightly coupled with microbiological experiments to understand the extent to which the proposed mechanism might have led to the evolutionary invention of oxidant protective strategies and even aerobic metabolism. One of the major sinks for oxygen on early Earth would have been reduced iron.At the same time iron could have provided shielding against ultraviolet (UV) light that would have been reaching Earth’s surface in the absence of the ozone shield generated by atmospheric oxygen. Nanophase ferric oxide minerals in solution could provide a sunscreen against UV while allowing the transmission of visible light, in turn making the evolution of at least some photosynthetic organisms possible. We will test this hypothesis through coupled mineralogical and microbiological work in both the lab and the field, and examine its implications not only for Earth but for Mars as well with an emphasis on implications for upcoming spacecraft observations. Co-Investigators:
Peter Backus
Amos Banin
Max Bernstein
Janice Bishop
Nathalie Cabrol
Christopher Chyba
Friedemann Freund
Edmond Grin
Bishun Khare
Cynthia Phillips
Lynn Rothschild
Seth Shostak
David Summers
Jill Tarter SETI Institute NAI NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)
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