Summary
The Moon has no atmosphere and minuscule supplies of water, carbon, and nitrogen. Saturn’s moons are somewhat more salubrious, but are also far away. It would take a spacecraft seven months to reach Mars, but several years to reach Saturn.
Life on Mars would require adaptations that have never evolved on Earth. But if we did succeed, then our microbes could start changing Mars just as terrestrial microbes changed ancient Earth. They could create greenhouse gasses to warm the planet, crack open nitrates in the soil to thicken the atmosphere, and release oxygen for living things to breathe.
On Mars, the soil contains high levels of perchlorate, a chemical found in rocket fuel and explosives. On Earth, perchlorates are considered industrial waste and are toxic to humans above 2 parts per billion. Microbes on Earth have evolved several strategies to deal with toxins.
At “sea” level, the atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 155 times lower than it is on Earth. But again, this is not a problem for microbial life. Bacteria can grow just fine at low pressures, so long as they can access the gasses required for metabolism.
All liquid water on Mars has a water activity below 0.5. There are no known lifeforms that could survive in this water. An engineered organism may not be able to grow in the perchlorate brines or low-water environments. But perhaps it could make its own environmental niche that is more hospitable.
Our goal at Pioneer Labs is to find the true limits of life, unshackled from the environments that exist on Earth. We plan to make a “polyextreme” microbe by endowing it with genes and pathways found in microbes that have evolved high resistance to UV radiation, temperatures, and so on.
Pioneer Labs is making a moonshot in humanity’s long quest to terraform Mars. This benefit will also extend to Earth, where much of the cost of biomanufacturing is wrapped up in catering to fragile organisms. Even if we fail, our home will be better because of it.
