With deadlines approaching for the first human mission to Mars, the scientists are conducting experiments to make the red planet as welcoming as possible to human settlements. A new experiment, published in Frontiers in Microbiology, by researchers at the University of Bremen, Germany, has shown for the first time that Anabaena cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can be successfully grown under atmospheric conditions on Mars.
Astronauts on Mars need oxygen, water, food and other consumables, so this is an important development as it will be much easier to develop sustainable biological life support systems.
Survive on Mars
To provide some background information, a cyanobacterial boom that occurred 2.4 billion years ago is believed to be largely responsible for Earth’s breathing atmosphere. The presence of cyanobacteria gave the atmosphere its oxygen. For this reason, scientists were already considering whether and how we could use cyanobacteria ‘ability to make oxygen to live on Mars and possibly other planets.
However, the atmospheric pressure from Mars always presented itself as a setback. In this experiment, the researchers developed a bioreactor called Atmos. It has an atmospheric pressure of about 10 percent that of Earth and uses only the ingredients found on Mars.
The bioreactor also had water, which can be collected from the frozen ice of Mars, which is abundant in certain places. Plus, it had a Mars regolith simulant, which the researchers made by mixing minerals found on Mars.
The nine glass and steel vessel system was carefully monitored and monitored at all times.
“Here we show that cyanobacteria can use gases available in the atmosphere of Mars, at low total pressure, as their source of carbon and nitrogen,” said astrobiologist Cyprien Verseux.
“Under these conditions, cyanobacteria retained their ability to grow in water containing only Martian-like dust and could still be used to feed other microbes. This could help make long-term missions to Mars sustainable.”
The team now wants to work on developing a bioreactor system that could one day enable life on Mars.
“Our bioreactor, Atmos, is not the culture system that we would use on Mars: it is intended to test the conditions on Earth that we would provide there,” said Verseux. “But our results will aid in the design of a Martian culture system … We want to move from this proof-of-concept to a system that can be used efficiently on Mars.”