Life Marker Chip

Exomars mission

One of the goals of the Exomars mission is to find signs of past or present life. Establishing whether life ever existed on Mars,or is still active today, is one of the great outstanding questions of our time. It is also a prerequisite to prepare for future human exploration of the red planet. To address this important objective, ESA plans to launch the ExoMars mission in 2018. The mission comprises a marslander and a rover

Life marker chip

The Life Marker Chip Instrument is regarded as a very important, next-generation instrument for the detection of signs of life. It will probably be the only instrument on Pasteur capable of directly identifying molecules of unequivocal biological origin (the others rely on indirect methods). It is also the sole instrument with the potential to unambiguously detect present life, if it exists at the landing site. This instrument relies on novel antibody micro-array technology.

Involvement of LioniX

LioniX is involved in design and fabrication of the microfluidic and integrated optical chips right in the heart of the Life Marker Chip Instrument.

References

Exomars at ESA

Exomars (Dutchmars) at NSO

Artist's impression of ExoMars rover arrival at Mars on Youtube