Abstract EANA2025-78

Combining field, lab, and space experiments has been the strategy of the former Institute of Planetary Research (now Institute of Space Research) at DLR Berlin since more than 15 years, to support current and future missions to Mars, Icy Moons, and beyond. This presentation offers an overview of recent activities and lab capabilities related to these efforts, focusing on field and lab investigations.

Recent field campaigns in planetary analogue environments have, for instance, investigated the limits of life and detectable biosignatures. These include expeditions to one of the driest places on Earth, the Atacama Desert, as a Mars-analog; and the hot springs of the Kerguelen islands, with relevance to early-Mars but also early terrestrial life.

To push further the limits of survival, investigate potential adaptation, and study biosignatures’ stability, samples selected from field campaigns, but also diverse extremophilic organisms, are then subjected to simulation experiments in PASLAB at DLR Berlin.

Indeed, PASLAB, part of the Planetary Laboratories Department (PLL), is a unique facility dedicated to simulating planetary environments for scientific research. It recreates conditions like those found on Mars and other celestial bodies to support research on habitability, biosignatures, but also technologies for humidity detection and generation, and material properties under extreme conditions.

The facility can simulate various planetary conditions, including pressure, temperature, radiation, atmospheric composition (including gases like CO2, N2, Ar, CH4, and O2), and relative or absolute humidity levels in diurnal cycles.  All parameters are computer controlled and experiments can be run for a few hours up to several months.  Different regolith mixtures to simulate extraterrestrial soils are also available.  The measuring capabilities are kept flexible to reach a maximum of suitability for the hardware configuration, as it is required by the experiments. The diagnostic tools include photosynthesis monitoring, sample acquisition for GC-MS, spectrometry, monitoring of the thermo-physical parameters, and in-situ inspection by an internal camera.

Recent habitability experiments performed in PASLAB have demonstrated the survival of diverse organisms under present Mars conditions, including lichens (Lorenz et al. 2023), cyanobacteria, Antarctic rock communities, archaea (Acidianus manzaensis), and even cysts of the brine shrimp Artemia franciscana. The biosignatures of the tested organisms are further characterized in PLL labs like the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory (PSL) or the Raman Mineral and Bio-Detection Laboratory (RMBL), using technologies part of current and future missions to Mars (reflectance and Raman).

PASLAB plays also an essential role in support of space exposure experiments, like it was the case for BIOMEX, and now for BioSigN, to select samples, and test preparations and protocols, before a journey in Low Earth Orbit.

Lorenz, C., Bianchi, E., Poggiali, G., Alemanno, G., Benesperi, R., Brucato, J.R., Garland, S., Helbert, J., Loppi, S., Lorek, A., Maturilli, A., Papini, A., de Vera, J.-P., Baqué, M., 2023. Survivability of the lichen Xanthoria parietina in simulated Martian environmental conditions. Sci. Rep. 13, 4893. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32008-6