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Pilbara

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Perseverance rover’s search for life on Mars: from the outback to the red planet

19 Feb 2021

As NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars, UNSW is playing a key role in the search for life on the red planet. In July 2019, Professor Martin Van Kranendonk took a team of NASA and European Space Agency scientists to the Pilbara, in the Western Australian outback.

Luke Steller teaching students how to find fossils

Ancient signs of life: inspiring the next generation of scientists in the outback

30 Jul 2020

As Perseverance prepares to launch for Mars, two UNSW PhD students look back on a field trip that gave Indigenous high school students a behind-the-scenes look at the rover’s upcoming mission.

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Most read science stories of 2019

18 Dec 2019

This year's most popular science stories took readers from melting Antarctic ice sounding the alarm on microbes and climate change, to a pest-proof fence to protect native wildlife in far western NSW, and early signs of life in ancient rocks in the Pilbara, WA.

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Earliest signs of life: scientists find microbial remains in ancient rocks

26 Sep 2019

Western Australia’s famous 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites contain microbial remains of some of the earliest life on Earth, UNSW scientists have found.

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NASA and European Space Agency join UNSW in outback for training crucial for Mars 2020 missions

02 Sep 2019

UNSW scientists have shown a group of Mars specialists the secrets of the remote Pilbara's ancient rocks - all in preparation for NASA's and ESA's Mars 2020 missions.

Searching for signs of ancient life

30 Aug 2019

UNSW scientists - led by Professor Martin van Kranendonk - have shown a group of Mars specialists the secrets of the remote Pilbara's ancient rocks - all in preparation for NASA's and ESA's Mars 2020 missions.

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Life on Earth - and Mars?

14 Aug 2017

The discovery of a piece of geyserite found in hot springs environment has changed our thinking our thinking about the origins of life on earth - and has implications for the search for life on Mars.

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Evidence of ancient life in hot springs on Earth could point to fossil life on Mars

10 May 2017

Life on the land could have started millions of years earlier on Earth than first thought. This could change the way we think about life developing elsewhere in the universe, writes Tara Djokic.

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Oldest evidence of life on land found in 3.48 billion-year-old Australian rocks

10 May 2017

Fossils discovered by UNSW scientists in ancient hot spring deposits in the Pilbara have pushed back by 580 million years the earliest known evidence for microbial life on land.