Lasers to seek out life on Mars

I couldn't resist reporting on this research that I originally came across in an article at PhysOrg.com¹, which had all the right ingredients to make it jump out of the page and slap me around the face: lasers and Mars.

Scientists in the US and UK have been collaborating to build an instrument capable of making the voyage to Mars and operating in its hostile conditions, for the purpose of detecting the signs of chemical compounds that may indicate the existence of past or present life there². It's too late for the Phoenix mission that recently landed in the northern polar regions of Mars, but the scientists are hoping it will be approved for upcoming lander or rover missions to the red planet.

The science is not new: ultra-violet (UV) light illuminates a sample and causes any organic molecules in it to fluoresce. However, not until the recent development of UV emitting LED's has it become possible to produce an instrument small, light and robust enough for a space mission of this sort. High sensitivity is also demanded of the detection system, because the scientists do not expect the organic material to exist in great abundance. In fact they expect to have to dig for it or search for it in rock crevices, because the surface of Mars is heavily bombarded by solar radiation, making it very unlikely that organic material could ever survive there.

1) Laser fluorescence could find life on Mars from PhysOrg.com

A team of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom has developed a technique using ultraviolet light to identify organic matter in soils that they say could be used to document the existence of life on Mars. [...]

2) GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L12201, doi:10.1029/2008GL034296, 2008