• Article

      Dark microbiome and extremely low organics in Atacama fossil delta unveil Mars life detection limits (2024) 

      Azua-Bustos, Armando; Fairén, Alberto G.; González-Silva, Carlos; Prieto-Ballesteros, Olga; Carrizo, Daniel; Sánchez-García, Laura; Parro, Victor; Fernández-Martínez, Miguel Ángel; Escudero, Cristina; Muñoz-Iglesias, Victoria; ... (Nature Research, 2023)
      Identifying unequivocal signs of life on Mars is one of the most important objectives for sending missions to the red planet. Here we report Red Stone, a 163-100 My alluvial fan–fan delta that formed under arid conditions ...
    • Article

      Inhabited subsurface wet smectites in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert as an analog for the search for life on Mars (2020) 

      Azua-Bustos, Armando; Fairén, Alberto G.; González Silva, Carlos; Carrizo, Daniel; Fernández-Martínez, Miguel Ángel; Arenas-Fajardo, Cristián; Fernández-Sampedro, Maite; Gil-Lozano, Carolina; Sánchez-García, Laura; Ascaso, Carmen; ... (Nature Research, 2020-12-01)
      The modern Martian surface is unlikely to be habitable due to its extreme aridity among other environmental factors. This is the reason why the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert has been studied as an analog for the ...