SECOND EXPERIMENTS I IN THE ROBOTIC INVEST N INVESTIGATION OF IGATION LIFE IN THE ATACAMA DESERT OF CHILE

摘要

The Atacama Desert of northern Chile may be the mostrnlifeless place on Earth, yet microorganisms do survivernin some areas. The distribution and diversity of life inrnthe Atacama remains unexplored and is the focus of thernLife in the Atacama project. To conduct thisrninvestigation, survey traverses across the desert withrnbiologic and geologic instruments will allow us torncreate biogeographic maps. We accomplish thesernsurveys with an autonomous astrobiology rover.rnIn this paper we motivate the Life in the Atacamarnproject and report on the second of three field seasonsrnof scientific in investigation and technical experiments inrnvestigation Chile. We describe the rover, instruments, algorithmsrnand assess intermediate results. These results providerninsight into the design of an effective roboticrnastrobiologist for future planetary investigations andrnint into the best methods to conduct astrobiologic surveys.