Mexican Scientist is awarded " Alexander von Humbolt" Medal 2009

The 2009 Alexander von Humboldt Medal is awarded to Rafael Navarro-González for his outstanding achievements in the discovery of Mars-like soils in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a location now being tested by NASA and ESA for new methodologies and/or instrumentations to be sent to Mars in the search for life.

The Viking missions showed the martian soil to be lifeless and depleted in organic material and indicated the presence of one or more reactive oxidants. Here we report the presence of Mars-like soils in the extreme arid region of the Atacama Desert. Samples from this region had organic species only at trace levels and extremely low levels of culturable bacteria. Two samples from the extreme arid region were tested for DNA and none was recovered. Incubation experiments, patterned after the Viking labeled-release experiment but with separate biological and nonbiological isomers, show active decomposition of organic species in these soils by nonbiological processes.