The Viking missions showed the martian soil to be lifeless and depleted in organic material and indicated the presence of one or more reactive oxidants. Here we report the presence of Mars-like soils in the extreme arid region of the Atacama Desert. Samples from this region had organic species only at trace levels and extremely low levels of culturable bacteria..............
Click here for the pdf of the ScienceMag article.
Pictures
(1. Navarro Gonzalez, 2. Patrick Zachmann)
Top Left1: Shuttle view of the Atacama Desert.
Bottom Left1: The driest area of the desert where virtually
no bacteria was found.
Top Right: SEM image of Blastococcus aggregatus isolated from a soil sample
taken from the Atacama Desert.
Bottom Right2: Fred Rainey sampling soil in a 80cm deep hole.
