Research in astrobiology in the Atacama Desert and Altiplano natural laboratories and in the experimental laboratory

DEMERGASSO, C.; ABREVAYA, X.C.; TEBES-CAYO, C.; CHONG, G.; CABROL, N.

Conferencia; Salud en Altura y Ciencias Espaciales, Universidad Católica del Norte, 28-30 de Marzo 2023; 2023

Universidad Catolica del Norte

The Atacama Desert and the Altiplano are natural laboratories of excellence for a set ofsciences from astronomy, geology, planetary sciences, biological and social sciences,among others. For more than 20 years this LN has been the framework for planetaryresearch due to its exceptional analogy with Mars. On the other hand, added to theanalysis of the phenomena discovered in these natural laboratories, additional simulationlaboratories of extraterrestrial environments on Earth are required, especially to reproduceexclusive conditions of space or of other planetary bodies and, therefore, we cannot findnaturally in the terrestrial environment, such as vacuum, UVC and Vacuum UV (VUV)radiation. The knowledge acquired is important for understanding various biologicalprocesses that could occur on other planetary bodies such as Mars or even on exoplanets,as well as being able to determine the limits to life "as we know it" in environments otherthan terrestrial.We will take a trip through research carried out in these laboratories and we will focus onthe study of biosignatures (from orbit-to-ground scales) as well as studies on the incidenceof UV radiation, and its impact at a biological level that covers both the natural terrestrialand extraterrestrial environment under laboratory simulation conditions.Acknowledgments: NASA Astrobiology Institute and the NASA Astrobiology Program, MaryVoytek Director, SETI Institute NAI Team, by NAI project grants numbers NNA04CC05Aand NNA15BB01A.  Proyecto NODO-0014 Natural Laboratory Atacama Desert (LANDATA)(UCN). Proyecto FOVI210048. From Atacama Desert to Solar System: challengingthe future for Chilean biomining industry (UDA). EXO-UV Program team, BioSunProject team, Argentinian Research Unit in Astrobiology team. Austrian Academyof Sciences (OAW) and Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Institute of Physics,University of Graz, Austria. Project TGM—16126 (LNLS), and CNPEM, BrazilProject PIP—CONICET 0754, Argentina.