Arkansas researchers are helping NASA find life on Mars. NASA has awarded a $1.5 million grant to a team of researchers from UALR, Arkansas Tech, and Harding University. This grant will be used to develop a system to look for signs of life on Mars.
"What could be better than be looking for life on Mars. It would be just a fantastic discovery," says Dr. Gary Anderson, UALR. "What we have here is a spectrometer which consists of a laser source and detector, and it works because specific molecules absorb light at very specific frequencies, so we sweep the laser through a frequency of interest and if there is a dip in signal it means a molecule of interest is present," explains Dr. Anderson. In other words, if methane is detected, there could be life on Mars.
UALR Graduate Institute of Technology director Dr. Keith Hudson is the administrative principle investigator. He says the team will develop a system to look for signs of life in a broad region around a landing site. He says the system is designed to search an area hundreds of meters or more in diameter for water vapor and certain gases. Once the gases are detected the system would localize the source to allow NASA to further investigate the site.
This grant will be used for field studies which will basically find out how well this instrument works in the field and time to work out the bugs. The plan is to eventually have NASA attach this device to one of it's rovers and send it to space.
The team is working on a proposal for that grant which would entale integrating its instruments with NASA hardware. This is a three year grant.
