Because the caves, mines, and crevasses on Earth are filled with extremophiles, NASA uses those lifeforms as a guide to its exploration of the universe. The hidden parts of the planet have to make their own way of survival. Surface life has photosynthesis, but subsurface only a tiny fraction of that energy trickles down so they process minerals from rocks. These lifeforms could be a model for another way life on Mars or Europa or somewhere else! An important aspect to consider if there is life elsewhere would be how to study the environment without contaminating it. Penny Boston, the new director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, is on a mission to search for evidence of other life and inspire others to do the same.
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I was just talking about this in my blog post! Yes, I do agree with you that Extremophiles could help us better prefer for space travel and planet explorations. A super cool fact I shared about extremophiles is the fact that they actually cannot survive in temperatures that we consider to be “normal.” Amazing!!
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Right! Director Boston specializes in doing cabe research before she worked for NASA to learn more about the extremophiles.
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Really neat way of doing this kind of research! I wonder what she thinks about Mars being potentially contaminated by microbes (from Earth) on rovers that were sent to the surface.
-TA
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