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The Atacama Desert: A Window into Late Mars Surface Habitability?Decades of robotic exploration have revealed that Mars was capable of sustaining life in the Noachian and Hesperian periods (> 3 billion years ago). But habitability conditions progressively deteriorated thereafter, and a lasting trend of climate change has made the surface of the planet likely uninhabitable at present times. One of the outstanding enigmas in Mars exploration is when was the last time that the surface of the planet could have sustained life. In this chapter we address this question through comparisons with one of the oldest and driest deserts on Earth, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. We base our analysis on a latitudinal rainfall gradient that allows to investigate how microbial communities respond to increasing dryness. We posit that the ecological successions observed along the Atacama rainfall gradient represent a possible model for the adaptation of an early martian biosphere to increasing dryness throughout the planet’s geologic history, offering clues to the last surface environments that could have sustained life, and the timing of the last surface habitable period. These might in turn be the best locations to search for evidence of life.
Document ID
20205007986
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Book Chapter
Authors
Alfonso Fernandez Davila
(Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Kimberley Anne Warren-rhodes
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Mountain View, California, United States)
Jocelyne DiRuggiero
(Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, United States)
Date Acquired
September 24, 2020
Publication Date
November 1, 2020
Publication Information
Publication: Martian Enigmas
Publisher: Elsevier
Subject Category
Exobiology
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 811073.02.52.01.09
WBS: 811073.02.13.07.81
WBS: 811073.02.38.01.02
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Use by or on behalf of the US Gov. Permitted.
Technical Review
Professional Review
Keywords
Atacama Desert
Life
Habitability
Water
Mars
Ecological succession

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