Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2021

4 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING It will be difficult to find traces of life in the Martian subsoil O n February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover will land in Jezero Crater on Mars. On June 10, 2023, ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover will also land on the red planet in a region called Oxia Planum. Both rovers are equipped with scientific in- struments that could allow them to determine if life existed on Mars or even if life is still present in microbial form. Both Jezero Crater and Oxia Planum are very promising sites from a biological point of view given the particular abundance of hydrated minerals that characterize them, pro- duced in the first billion years by a rather lively hydrological system that may have supported life. The Martian atmosphere is no longer able to shield the extremely arid surface from ionizing radiation (especially UVC), meaning we can only hope to find traces of desiccated life pre- served within mineral matrices capa- by Michele Ferrara revised by Damian G. Allis NASA Solar System Ambassador