Autonomous Robot Finds Life in Atacama Desert

Neil Halelamien writes "Nature and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report that a NASA-funded "robotic astrobiologist" named Zoë (a successor to the Hyperion rover) has found life in Chile's Atacama desert. The Atacama is the Earth's driest desert, with steep slopes and rugged terrain. This is the first robot to remotely detect life, finding bacteria (and lichens, in the less dry areas) by using a fluorescent imager. The robot could also spray special dyes to detect life signatures like DNA, protein, lipids, and carbohydrates. Zoë's next assignment will be to autonomously sample soil over 50 kilometers of the Atacama. The Atacama desert is thought to be similar to Mars; instruments similar to those used on the 1970s Viking missions have previously failed to detect life there."

Comments

Contamination probably

[Eternally optimistic]

Most likely, the researchers who put the robot in the desert didn't wash their feet properly.

Re:Contamination probably

[Wavicle]

The Atacama receives a very small amount of water in the form of fog or dew. Although the Atacama is very dry, it is not very warm. Something like a million people live in the Atacama. In some particularly dry spots, they live from the water collected by giant "fog collectors".

Now we've found life on Earth...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we can start looking for intelligent beings.

Why do we need a rover for this?

[Red_Icculus]

We should send Google to search for life on Mars.