Within the perspective of the current and next space missions to Mars (MSL 2011 and Exomars 2016 2018), the detection and enantioselective separation of building blocks such as the amino acids are important subjects which are becoming fundamental for the search for traces of life on the surface and subsurface of Mars.
They will dig up the soil, map the surface, look for traces of life, and possibly even return samples to earth for analysis.
Earlier this century, they shied away from the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a telescope designed to look for Earth-like worlds and analyse their atmospheres for traces of life.
Iodine is an essential trace element for life.
Iodine is an essential trace element for life and a key component for the biogenesis of thyroid hormones.
Moreover, as noted above in Section 3 (and in Summons et al., 2011), when looking for past traces of life, the possibilities for, or lack of, fossilization and preservation need to be taken into account.
That is when Beagle 2, a 73-pound lander named for Darwin's ship of discovery, is scheduled to parachute to the surface of a broad basin, Isidis Planitia, and begin looking for traces of life.
Although artificial mineralization can also be applied to answer astrobiological questions, it has still not been used in the search for traces of life in extraterrestrial samples, notably in Martian rocks.
Relatively pristine in condition, such outcrops, along with others in South Africa, have long been a popular place to look for traces of life from the Archean eon, which ended 2.5bn years ago.
Within the context of the future space missions to Mars (MSL 2011 and Exomars 2016), which aim at searching for traces of life at the surface, the detection and quantitation of enantiomeric organic molecules is of major importance.
