What looks like a painter splashed green paint on a blue wall is actually a scaly lichen on a rocky outcrop that fluoresces yellowish under UV light. Researchers found the yellow pavement lichen (Acarospora socialis) during a simulated Mars expedition near the Mars Desert Research Station in the desert of the US state of Utah.
The barren area is similar to living conditions on Mars and will therefore be used by Mars Society astronauts to simulate spacewalks during future Mars expeditions. On the one hand, the “Martians” learn in the desert what it takes to survive on our neighboring planet. On the other hand, they practice how to document and recover possible finds of living beings on Mars.
A few years ago, on one of these training missions, the Mars160, the crew members found the above and many other lichens. The pseudo-astronauts collected 102 specimens of these creatures and brought them “back to Earth,” where they examined and identified them in the laboratory. They compared their appearance, their anatomy, their chemical structure and their DNA. In total, the team discovered 35 rare species of lichens that thrive in the barren Utah desert. The researchers found 13 additional specialist species during a similar mission in a simulated Mars world in the Canadian Arctic.
The findings demonstrate once again how robust these fascinating symbiotic communities are, which are made up of fungi and photosynthesizing algae or bacteria. Lichens can survive on a wide variety of surfaces, such as stones, trees and bare soil, and are therefore found almost everywhere on earth. However, it is rather questionable whether lichens actually occur on Mars.