Evolution of Organics of Astrobiological Interest under Simulated Martian Environmental Conditions

Mathematics – Logic

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The environmental conditions on Mars seem to have been favourable for the emergence of Life. The search for organics at Mars surface/subsurface is then one of the main goals of the future missions to Mars, NASA MSL (2011) and ESA ExoMars (2016). Due to the current extreme conditions of the Mars surface, the comprehension of the stability of organic molecules in such an environment is essential to prepare these missions, and also to better understand the results of their investigation.
With this aim, we develop the MOMIE project (Martian Organics Molecules Irradiation and Evolution), an experiment designed to study the evolution of organics under martian environmental conditions. The first part of this project deals with the interaction between organics and UV radiation. The next step of development now focuses on the oxidative processes, using a combination of UV flux and of oxidants generated in situ.
The literature evokes the formation of oxidants as a result of the soil interaction with UV radiations, and then it permits to interpret the NASA Viking biological experiments results. Furthemore, the presence of water or hydrogen peroxide in the soil could also produce oxidants. Then our laboratory experiment reproduces the synergy of soil, water ice and UV radiation to study their impact on organics. First tests were conducted on glycine (chemical standard). Following targets are molecules of astrobiological interest.
MOMIE will then assess several questions relative to the quest for organics at Mars :
Which organics do we have to search for on Mars ?, or which ones should be resistant or metastable in martian environment ?
What is the origin of an organic molecule detected at Mars ? Biotic or abiotic, exogenous or endogenous ?
We present here the MOMIE experimental set-up and the first results obtained with it.

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