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Amino Acid Destruction in the Martian Surface Environment

Introduction: The search for organic molecules and traces of life on Mars has been a major topic in planetary science for several decades. 26 years ago Viking, a mission dedicated to the search for life on Mars, detected no traces of life. The search for extinct or extant life on Mars is the future perspective of several missions to the red planet. In order to determine where and what those missions should be looking for, laboratory experiments under simulated Mars conditions are crucial. Organic compounds that are abundant in meteorites such as carbonaceous chondrites are a logical target for those experiments since they may have accumulated to form significant deposits on the martian surface via exogenous delivery [1]. We have examined the photostability of simple amino acids, given their well-characterised properties and their ubiquitous presence in meteoritic samples. Experiments have been performed to study the stability of thin films of amino acids against UV irradiation. The results showed that thin films of glycine and D-alanine are expected to have a half-life of 22 ± 5 hours and of 4 ± 2 hours, respectively, when irradiated with Mars-like UV flux levels [2]. In this paper we present the results of additional experiments, in which thin films of glycine have been irradiated with UV in a CO2 atmosphere, and cooled to an average martian surface temperature of 210 K.