Exploring Iceland Like It’s Mars: NASA Scientists Test Life-Seeking Strategies

0:00 Iceland is a fabulous Mars analog.

0:03 You look at the rocks under your feet,

0:06 and if you come at it with a curious approach,

0:09 there is so much that is there to learn.

0:14 We have a team of over 30 scientists here who

0:17 are exploring the amazing terrains of Iceland and making planetary exploration.

0:22 By kind of truly understanding how processes work here on Earth,

0:25 we can extrapolate that to other planets, too.

0:28 The main mission for SWIFT, which stands for Southwest Iceland Field Team,

0:33 is finding planetary analogs here on Earth.

0:45 Tell me when.

0:46 You want one more?

0:48 Let's go one more.

0:49 Yeah.

0:49 I'm David Burtt.

0:51 Part of the SWIFT mission.

0:53 We're here at Lake Kleifarvatn looking for carbonates

0:55 and, and some other carbon rich species.

1:02 We don't understand how the carbon cycle works

1:06 on, on planets and planetary bodies beyond Earth.

1:10 Iceland and Lake Kleifarvatn as a whole provide a really nice analog.

1:21 We've got our our team gearing up and and almost ready to go.

1:25 We're visiting a third hydrothermal vent today and we're,

1:29 we're going to be swimming out to that spot and seeing what we can find there.

1:40 For me, the exciting thing about being on trips like

1:42 this is being around amazing scientists and unraveling stories together.

1:46 And so I have a team of five of us or six of us out here today,

1:49 and everybody’s opinion matters.

1:51 Everybody from an undergraduate all the way

1:53 to senior scientists who are helping out.

1:56 I’m Mike Thorpe, I’m an Assistant Research Scientist

1:59 at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

2:02 We're at this region called Stóra Laxá,

2:04 which is in the southwest region of Iceland.

2:07 It's a river that is kind of carving through

2:09 these basalts that were laid down by volcanic activity.

2:12 So our goal is to kind of look at the change of like,

2:15 how you go from sediments in a stream to kind

2:18 of a sedimentary rock and what happens in between.

2:20 It's really important because those rocks are widespread on the surface of Mars.

2:24 If you look at the Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Gale Crater,

2:28 it's pretty much by and large seen only sedimentary rocks.

2:31 And so, like we are now having

2:33 a more fundamental comparison by looking at these.

2:36 We'll walk along this, probably go down and walk along it.

2:43 This is weird.

2:45 Right?

2:45 What the heck is this?

2:47 I know, it gets weird when like volcanoes are involved.

2:50 Like, your eyes can sort of follow some linear...

2:54 They're widespread on Mars.

2:55 I mean, it's the majority of, it's almost all what Curiosity has

2:58 looked at, it’s rocks that were formed in a lake, in rivers.

3:03 We just don't have sedimentary rocks from this kind of source.

3:07 This, this source rock is basaltic in nature.

3:10 And so it's just like a really,

3:12 as one-to-one comparison as I've come across compared

3:15 to other field sites that I've been so, excited to get our hands on it.

3:30 We're pulling a mix of samples here.

3:32 We're getting gases, we're getting fluids.

3:34 We're getting, sediment core samples.

3:39 It's called the heart, in part because of its shape.

3:42 It's a relatively shallow spot.

3:45 You've got CO2-rich bubbles coming up out of this loose sediment,

3:49 and we're going to be swimming out

3:52 to that spot and seeing what we can find there.

4:03 There's a ton of information to be, to be interrogated here.

4:08 What does life need to operate?

4:10 We want to take systems like Kleifarvatn to help

4:14 us understand what those element cycles might be like.

4:19 And we're particularly focused on carbon,

4:21 since that happens to be one of the, the big species,

4:25 the big elements, that underpins life as we know it.

4:37 We came across the perfect outcrops for me.

4:39 We were seeing these kind of silt stones, some mudstones.

4:42 So they're really fine-grain material which are perfect

4:44 because those are deposited in like a lake environment,

4:47 so a very habitable environment.

4:50 This is super exciting for me.

4:52 This is, I mean, we've been looking at sedimentary

4:54 rocks that have been formed in similar processes on Mars.

4:57 And it's, it's remarkable now to be like holding something similar in your hand.

5:02 And it teaches us so much, kind of what the rover has been exploring,

5:05 but also prepares us to be exploring the surface of Mars one day in person,

5:09 and whenever we get our geologists, our astronauts up there exploring,

5:13 I think it's just, we really need to have this ground truth.

5:16 And it's, it's really cool to be holding a piece of information like this.

5:24 The plan for those samples, we want to do some X-ray diffraction work.

5:29 So that'll tell us what minerals are present and in what abundances.

5:33 Dissolved organic carbon.

5:35 Dissolved inorganic carbon.

5:38 I'm an isotope guy, so I'm going to be

5:40 looking at the carbon and oxygen isotopes in the system.

5:43 Part of our plan is to bring a lot of these samples back,

5:47 so that we have extra material in case we arrive in the lab

5:51 and we realize there's a complimentary measurement

5:54 that we hadn't considered coming into the field.

5:57 And that way we'll have spare sample that we can we can use for that.

6:02 I come back to the idea that the average landscape around us can tell us so much

6:07 about the world we're currently living in, the history

6:11 of, of our planet and other worlds, as well.

6:18 NASA.