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Tag: Mars

We are back on “Mars”

New Zealand Astrobiology Network in collaboration with Mars Society New Zealand, Mars Society Australia and the University of Canterbury (UC) have selected a student to be part of Crew 215 of the Mars Desert Research Station simulation.

Liquid water detected on Mars, can it hold life?

This week, the European Space Agency announced that radar data collected by ESA’s Mars Express point to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the south polar region of Mars. There is a long way between finding liquid brine pools on Mars and finding life. However, there might be a similar place on Earth, the Blood Falls in Antarctica that originate from a hypersaline brine groundwater environment that supports an anaerobic microbial ecosystem sustained by chemical energy. Professor Ian Hawes from Waikato University explains the importance of the discovery from Mars.

Dr Mitch Schulte, NASA

Mitch Schulte is a Program Scientist with the Mars Exploration Program in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. As a Program Scientist, Mitch is responsible for and manages the science content of a number of NASA’s Mars missions. He has visited New Zealand in 2018.

The 2nd International Mars Sample Return Conference

Professor Kathy Campbell of University of Auckland and Chair of the Board of trustees for the New Zealand Astrobiology Network was invited to the 2nd International Mars Sample Return Conference in Berlin, April 2018, where she presented on the value of returning samples from hydrothermal environments as part of a NASA led team of 71 scientists from around the world.

New Zealand’s hot springs contribute to discovery of oldest evidence for life on land!

Life might have colonised land 580 million years earlier than previously thought – and this has also implications for the search for life on Mars.
Professor Kathy Campbell from University of Auckland is co-author of a paper published in Nature comms that pushes the evidence for the oldest life on land by 580 million years from 2.9 to 3.5 billion years.

The next rover mission to Mars in 2020 to search for biosignatures — how New Zealand’s hot springs are helping NASA choose the next landing site

A team, including Professor Kathy Campbell, attended a workshop sponsored by NASA and JPL on 8-10 February 2017 in Monrovia, California, where 250 scientists and engineers discussed where the next Mars rover, launching in 2020, should land. Kathy’s team presented arguments for one of the 8 remaining landing sites that were still under consideration – at Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater – and were successful in making it into the Final 3. Choice of The One will happen at the 4th Mars 2020 landing site meeting planned for 2018.