Liftoff for Mars Pregnancy Test: Pink = All Clear, Blue = E.T.?

The "Biopan" contains the Life Marker Chip (LMC) and opens up (as shown at right) to fully expose its contents to outer space once in orbit; it's mounted on the outside of the Foton-M3 spaceship, which blasted off last week aboard the Soyuz rocket (pictured at left). (Photograph Courtesy of the European Space Agency)

Of the 40 experiments launched into orbit from a base in Kazakhstan on Sept. 14, by far the most intriguing is a modified kind of pregnancy test designed to scout for extraterrestrial life. The Life Marker Chip (LMC) can detect the presence of about 25 organic molecules associated with past or present life forms, thanks to the same technique used to discover a key female hormone in home pregnancy tests. During its 12-day mission, the chip will dangle outside a Russian Foton-M3 spaceship as it orbits the Earth 180 times, fully exposed to space radiation and total vacuum, before being retrieved by scientists to find out if it's durable enough to survive space travel.

"This will be the first time that these types of materials will have flown unprotected in space in a manner similar to a flight to Mars," says Andrew Steele, a scientist with the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. Similar tests are being conducted inside the International Space Station, he says.

The LMC is slated to head to Mars with the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission, which has a launch target of 2013. Mounted aboard a rover, the LMC will take crushed rock or surface dust, extract any organic molecules and send them through a lab-on-a-chip. The chip will contain an array on molecular receptors, like the antibodies produced by our immune systems, that recognize and bind to a specific molecule. For example, a molecule called 2-methyl hopane has been found on Earth in 2.7-billion-year-old sediment, and related molecules are often produced in bacterial membranes. Other receptors will search for molecules associated with meteor and comet impacts, past lifeforms and spacecraft contamination.

The chip is being developed by scientists from the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. —Alex Hutchinson

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