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Exploration

Antarctica as an Analog for Other Worlds

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 4, 2008

Tawani 2008 International Science Team Preps for Antarctic Expedition

“The team will be on the ice for forty-five days in the Untersee Oasis of Antarctica where they will launch an interdisciplinary campaign to study this remote ecosystem. By studying the lake, soil and glacier ecosystems of the region, the team can better understand the physical and chemical environments that constrain life, and also identify novel organisms that have exploited these unique niches. These investigations will shed light not only on how life adapts to such extremes on Earth, but also shapes the search for life on other planets such as Mars as well as the icy moons of the outer solar system planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, and even provide a glimpse of what Earth’s earliest biosphere was like billions of years ago.”

Update from Dale Andersen in Cape Town: “Looks like we will leave tomorrow as scheduled assuming the weather holds – so we hope to be on the ice by 6am Thursday Novolazarevskaya time. Its about a 6 hour flight from Cape Town to the station. Three to four days later, we should be on our way to Lake Untersee if the weather is good.”

Editor’s note: Dale and I have been doing this sort of thing for a long time. We’re almost certain that he and I did one of the first websites updated from Antarctica back in 1997. Go to this website and see “How We Built This Website”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.