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October 27, 2006
NASA
and SETI Explorers Search for Planetary Evolution
Clues on Earth
To go where few people have gone
before, a team of
expert scientists, mountain-climbers, and divers will explore the
ecosystems of
three high-altitude summit lakes to understand microbial
life’s adaptation to
these challenging environments.
Exploring new frontiers on Earth, the 15-member team will climb three
giant
volcanoes of the Andes and their summit lakes: Licancabur at 19,813
feet (6004
m), Poquentica at 19,192 feet (5850 m), and Aguas Calientes at 19,635
feet
(5950 m), in Bolivia
and Chile.
They will be going where the atmosphere is thin, ultraviolet radiation
intense,
and the temperatures cold, which make these environmental conditions
potential
analogs to ancient martian lakes. The High Lakes Project, funded by a
grant
from the NASA Astrobiology Institute to the SETI Institute, Mountain View,
Calif.,
is a collaborative effort to investigate extreme lakes at the summit of
high
volcanoes and collect new knowledge about the biosphere of our own
planet, the
evolution of life and its adaptation to climate changes. The expedition
is
scheduled to run from Oct. 27 to Dec. 7.
“What is critical for life is how environmental extremes
interact with each
other through time, and the time they give life to adapt,”
said Nathalie
Cabrol, the expedition’s lead and principal investigator at
the SETI Institute
who works at NASA
Ames Research
Center, in California's
Silicon Valley.
“Time may be just what is
needed for life to survive environmental changes. This is true on Earth
and
could have been true as well on Mars, and beyond.”
In the past four years, the team has investigated the geophysical
environment
of the summit lakes of the Licancabur and Poquentica volcanoes, as well
as
lower lakes such as Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanca at 14,520 feet
(4,400 m),
and Laguna Colorada at 14,850 feet (4,500 m). Some of these lakes in
the
Bolivian Andes are poorly known. They are located in rugged
environments, and
host unique ecosystems.
“Our earlier expeditions have helped us identify the presence
of a unique
ecosystem at the summit of Licancabur,” said Cabrol.
“Preliminary results on
microbial organisms both in bottom sediments near shore and zooplankton
confirmed that species are adapting to this unique environment. We also
know
now from these results that the potential to discover new species is
very
high.”
This year, the team will dive to the bottom of these high-altitude
lakes for
the first time using compact oxygen diving equipment, called
rebreathers. These
are bags that divers carry on their chests (like a third lung) that
capture
carbon dioxide and allow the divers to breathe pure oxygen, thereby
preventing
expelled carbon dioxide from contaminating the lakes.
“The advantage of the rebreathers is that they will allow
divers enough time to
explore the ecosystem at the bottom of the Licancabur lake in great
detail, to
capture the complexities of its biology, and to fully photo- and
video-document
it,” said Cabrol. “We are testing new exploration
techniques that are pushing
the limits of human exploration of high-altitude aquatic environments.
While
standard scuba was used by archeological teams back in the 80s and 90s
at
Licancabur, it presented risks that oxygen rebreathers
mitigate,” Cabrol said.
Previous expeditions to the 4-mile-high volcanic lake in the Andes
have led to significant scientific findings about the potential for
life on
other planets and helped prepare for future planetary missions to Mars
and
beyond. "This expedition represents potentially an immense source of
knowledge," Cabrol said. "We might learn more about microbial
adaptation to extreme environments on Earth that could lead to a better
understanding of how microbial organisms might have survived on ancient
Mars.”
For more
information about NASA's Astribiology Institute,
visit:
http://www.nai.arc.nasa.gov/
For
more information
about SETI, visit:
http://www.seti.org/site/pp.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=178025
For
more information
about the High
Lakes
project, visit:
http://highlakes.seti.org/
##
Contact:
Ruth Dasso
Marlaire
NASA Ames
Research Center,
Moffett
Field, Calif.
650-604-4709/9000
This text is
derived from:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2006/06_78AR.html
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