Atacama desert

TED Talk by Armando Azua-Bustos

How can Earth teach us about extraterrestrial life? In his TED Talk, The most Martian place on Earth, Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos takes us on a tour of the Atacama Desert, his childhood home now turned into his astrobiological laboratory. Searching for signs of life on Mars, or other planets, requires careful understanding of how organisms can survive in dry and extreme environments, and Dr. Azua-Bustos’ research helps to reveal the conditions that we might find life both there and elsewhere. […]

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Atacama Research Featured in HuffPo

Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos was recently featured in a Huffington Post article on the extreme limits of life in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Dr. Azua-Bustos discusses his team’s recent discovery of bacterial species at María Elena South, a location previously thought too dry to sustain life. The researchers are now investigating whether any such “dry limit” for life exists on Earth at all, and they are continuing to search for habitable environments with even less available water than at María Elena South. […]

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“Hijos de las Estrellas”

A new Documentary show titled “Hijos de las Estrellas” features BMSIS research scientist Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos as an interviewee. Providing an overview of contemporary planetary exploration. Dr. Azua-Bustos contributes to the discussion through a guided tour of his research of the Atacama Desert—which may hold some clues to undertsanding the environment of Mars and the role of water in life. The show will air soon on television in Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and other Latin American Countries, and you can stay […]

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Podcast: Finding life at the driest place on Earth

Our “Beer with BMSIS” podcast for November features a conversation with BMSIS research scientist Armando Azua-Bustos about his research goal of Finding life at the driest place on Earth. The “astrobiologist from the desert”, Dr. Azua-Bustos leads a conversation about the various forms of exotic life that exist–and might yet be found–in the dry deserts of the world. Focusing his research on the environment of the Atacama desert in Chile, Dr. Azua-Bustos explains the strategies he uses to search for […]

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