Because its geology is so much like that of Mars, the Norwegian island of Svalbard is a useful site for creating strategies for future mission sampling and analysis. The Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) has been using a suite of instruments to detect bacterial populations including spectroscopic equipment and a device that can detect cell wall components. The most interesting of the team’s methods may be protein microarrays, which can test for thousands of different molecules simultaneously.
“We’ve passed a major milestone,” said Dr. Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, and a member of the AMASE team. “We successfully tested an integrated Mars life-detection strategy for the first time and showed that if life on Mars resembles life on Earth at all, we’ll be able to find even a single-cell.”
Source: Press release “Major milestone for detecting life on Mars” via EurekAlert. An image of Dr. Steele on Svalbard (with spectacular scenery in the background) is available here.
