AustroMars and PolAres: Measuring forward contamination during Mars-analogue missions

Abstract

The search for life on Mars is one of the most ambitious scientific challenges in astrobiology. Although the surface of the planet is generally believed to be hostile to life, habitats embedded in the subsurface water repositories might harbor diminutive traces of extant or even extant life requiring advanced analytical capabilities. At the same time, hardware (including a human crew) delivered from Earth introduces the inherent risk of contaminating the very samples to be investigated for tracers of life and as such might compromise the pristinity of the sample leading to a false-positive detection. Deep subsurface drilling activities are considered to be one of the most promising sampling techniques, but require extensive infrastructure and technologies yet to be developed and increase the probability of such a forward contamination. AustroMars and PolAres are two Mars-analogue research programmes conducted by the Austrian Space Forum to investigate the contamination vectors of human Mars surface activities. Using fluorescent microspherules and non-pathogenic bacteria, an analysis strategy to quantify the bioload transfer rates and its field application in a Mars-analogue setting is described.