(Source: Daily Mail Online)
In the first week of April, twenty European scientists met at Boulby Mine in the UK to begin testing technologies for the exploration of Mars and hunting for deep subsurface life that will aid scientists in their search for extraterrestrial life. The scientists, amongst others from DLR (Institute for Aerospace Medicine, Department Radiation Biology), are part of an exciting new European space exploration programme called MASE (Mars Analogues for Space Exploration) which will investigate how life adapts to Mars-like environments, such as the deep subsurface.
Boulby Mine a 1.3 km-deep working salt and potash mine located near Whitby on the North East coast of England, offers the ideal environment to test procedures and technologies required for the surface and subsurface exploration of Mars and simultaneously understand life in the deep subsurface of the Earth. As a Mars-analogue environment, Boulby Mine’s ecosystem has particular features and organisms that are of great interest for astrobiology in general and the MASE project, funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Community, in particular.