Any microbial life extant in the top meters of the martian
subsurface is likely to be held dormant for long periods of time by
the current permafrost conditions. In this potential habitable
zone, a major environmental hazard is the ionising radiation field
generated by the flux of exogenous energetic particles: solar
energetic protons and galactic cosmic rays. The research reported
here constitutes the first multidisciplinary approach to assessing
the astrobiological impact of this radiation on Mars. A
sophisticated computer model has been constructed to characterise
this complex subsurface ionising radiation field and explore the
influence of variation in crucial parameters such as atmospheric
density, surface composition, and primary radiation spectra.
Microbiological work has also been conducted to isolate novel
cold-tolerant bacterial strains from the Dry Valleys environment of
Antarctica, an analogue site to the martian surface, and determine
their phylogenetic diversity and survival under high-dose gamma-ray
exposure frozen at -80 C, a temperature characteristic of the
martian mid-latitude permafrost."
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