One of the most exciting parts of my astrobiology research is working out how to search for evidence of past Martian life – signs of ancient biology that may have fallen extinct hundreds of millions of years ago.

One promising technique for finding these “biosignatures” – which could be pockets of organic molecules or even microbial life – is to entice them to glow in the dark using an ultraviolet laser mounted on a robotic probe. A camera on the probe would then detect the…
Lewis Dartnell, planetary science postdoc. >>> Read more