Zoë looks for life on Mars

researchers and their colleagues from NASA's Ames Research Center, the universities of Tennessee, Arizona and Iowa, as well as Chilean researchers at Universidad Catolica del Norte (Antofagasta) are preparing for the final stage of a three-year project to develop a prototype robotic astrobiologist, a robot that can explore and study life in the driest desert on Earth.

The team will direct and monitor Zoë, an autonomous solar-powered rover developed at Carnegie Mellon, as it travels 180 kilometres in Chile's Atacama Desert. Zoë is equipped with scientific instruments to seek and identify microorganisms and to characterise their habitats. It will use them as it explores three diverse regions of the desert during its two-month stay, which runs from August 22 to October 22.

The results of this expedition may enable future robots to seek life on Mars, as well as enabling the discovery of new information about the distribution of life on Earth.