Commissioned /

In Her Orbit

Searching the Earth for the Secrets of Life on Mars.

“Nathalie Cabrol was 5 when she saw the first moon landing on television. Pointing at Neil Armstrong, she told her mother that this was what she wanted to do. Even before then, she stared up at the stars in the night sky near her home in the Paris suburbs and knew that questions were there waiting for her.

Cabrol is an explorer, an astrobiologist and a planetary geologist specializing in Mars. She is the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, the nonprofit organization based in Mountain View, Calif., that seeks to explore, understand and explain the origin of life in the universe. Its work has the glamour of science fiction, but it involves rigorous research and, as Cabrol told me, “people who are passionate enough that they can put themselves into dire straits.” That is what she does, traveling to some of the world’s most extreme and dangerous environments in search of organisms that live in conditions analogous to those on Mars. Cabrol was the chief scientist on the team testing an experimental rover in the Atacama Desert in 2002 and was instrumental in choosing the landing site on Mars for Spirit, the rover that explored the planet from 2004 to 2010; she has dived in volcanic lakes at high altitudes to study the creatures within and has designed and installed an autonomous floating robot on an Andean lake that simulated lakes on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.”
Text by Helen Macdonald for The New York Times Magazine.

This is the story the Seti’s latest mission. A 26 days, expedition to Chile’s high-altitude deserts to test methods of detecting life on Mars.

This story is one of four extraordinary journeys published in the New York Times Magazine’s Voyages special issue – 25 March 2018.

NYTmag publication at the Link

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Portrait of Nathalie Cabrol, head of the SETI Institute and the world's foremost expert in the study of bio-organisms on Mars.
Cabrol is an explorer, an astrobiologist and a planetary geologist specializing in Mars. She is the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, the nonprofit organization based in Mountain View, Calif., that seeks to explore, understand and explain the origin of life in the universe.
In the background a geyser. During an interview, she has stated “I lived a lot of my life between volcanoes and high mountain lakes. Fire and water. If I have to chose an element to define my self it will be the steam”.

A picture of Nathalie Cabrol, standing in the landscape of the Salar de Pajonales. She was leading a 26 days expedition to Chile’s high-altitude deserts to test methods of detecting life on Mars.
Cabrol is an explorer, an astrobiologist, and a planetary geologist. She is the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, the nonprofit organization based in Mountain View, Calif., that seeks to explore, understand and explain the origin of life in the universe.

Salar de Pajonales. Members of the SETI expedition at work in the Mobile lab on a pickup truck.

A team member at work at El Tatio.
Michael Phillips, Planetary Science Ph.D. student is a member of the Remote Sensing Team.
Here is at work with a Field Spectrometer, an instrument that measures reflectance at the surface. With this instrument, they can determine mineralogy and certain organic compounds.
The goal of the team is to determine thresholds of detectability of biosignatures and habitable environments.

The team at work in the Salar de Pajonales. Here they’ve found traces of microorganisms.

The landscape surrounding the Salar de Pajonales.

An expedition member drilling the soil.
Salar de Pajonales. In this picture Daniel Kim, project engineer, one of the Seti expedition member, drilling the soil using the prototype auger developed for the Mars mission icebreaker to search for organics and life on Mars.
In Salar de Pajonales the Seti team were studying ancient lakes and looking from traces of past life (biosignatures), such as organic molecules, fossils, and others. They have also found endoliths (microbial communities living in rocks).

El Tatio, a geyser and hot-springs field, is among the highest in the world.
El Tatio is a geyser and hot springs field located within the Andes Mountains of northern Chile at 4,320 meters above mean sea level. Its name comes from the Quechua word for oven. It is among the highest-elevation geyser fields in the world.
Hot springs are one type of environment in which are found microorganisms that branch close to the last common ancestor. As such, the microbes live in environments that were likely more common on early Earth and Mars - the so-called "extreme environments" that are hot, salty, anoxic, high UV exposure, etc. Studies of the thermophiles (high-temperature-loving microorganisms) delve into primitive strategies for dealing with the environment. Because hot springs are mineralizing environments, their deposits contain a persistent record of the life and the environmental conditions over geologic time.
El Tatio, the Seti team were looking also for past and present biosignatures but this time, in a hydrothermal (hot spring) environment.

Desert near San Pedro de Atacama. A canyon of The Moon Valley.

El Tatio. Here Nathalie Cabrol taking a sample from a rock near a geyser.
In this area, the team is looking for samples that could link the living system to the rock record - biosignatures - for hot spring systems. They are looking at the mineral deposits, the microbial communities (stromatolites), and the environmental conditions to predict which biosignatures could persist and could prove useful in the search for life and habitable environments on Mars.

Nathalie Cabrol showing an important discovery under a desert rock.
In this area, the team is looking for samples that could link the living system to the rock record - biosignatures - for hot spring systems. They are looking at the mineral deposits, the microbial communities (stromatolites), and the environmental conditions to predict which biosignatures could persist and could prove useful in the search for life and habitable environments on Mars.
The green rock hosted chasmoliths. When UV radiation is too harsh, these organisms live underneath rocks and use reflected light from the sun for their photosynthesis.

El Tatio. Pablo Sobron at work. Pablo Sobron is a Research Scientist, Ph.D. Physics. He has led or collaborated on over 20 projects focused on the development of instruments and data processing tools for missions to explore the Solar System. In this picture is testing a next-generation laser plasma spectrometer to reveal the chemical makeup of extreme environments. This new instrument may be used by robots and astronauts to learn about the possibility of life on other planets.

The “Valle della Muerte” - The Death Valley of Chile. Near San Pedro de Atacama. A mission led by Nathalie Cabrol, the head of the SETI Institute and the world's foremost expert in the study of bio-organisms on Mars, is conducting a detailed study of the geological characteristics of these places of Chile.
The microbes live in environments that were likely more common on early Earth and Mars - the so-called "extreme environments" that are hot, salty, anoxic, high UV exposure, etc. Studies of the thermophiles (high-temperature-loving microorganisms) delve into primitive strategies for dealing with the environment.

The night sky over Salar de Pajonales.
In the Atacama Desert a rare set of factors – very little rainfall, crystal-clear skies, high altitudes and low-to-zero light pollution – have created an unparalleled stargazing location.