Last week we were busy hosting the inaugural Oceans Across Space and Time (OAST, @Space Oceans OAST on Facebook) combined first year meeting and field effort. It was a crazy week but a huge success. The goal of OAST is to improve life detection efforts on future NASA planetary science missions by better understanding how biomass and activity are distributed in habitats that mimic past or present “ocean worlds”. Ocean worlds is a concept that has gained a lot of traction in the last few years (see our Roadmap to Ocean Worlds synthesis paper here). We have a lot of past or present ocean worlds in our solar system (Earth obviously, but also Mars, Europa, Enceledus, and a whole host of other ice-covered moons), and oceans are seen as a natural feature of planetary bodies that are more likely to host life. Our first year effort focused on some open-ocean training for the Icefin robot, designed for exploring the protected spaces below floating ice shelves, and a multi-pronged investigation of the South Bay Salt Works.
The Salt Works are an amazing environment that my lab has visited previously (see here and here). Our previous work in this environment has raised more questions than answers, so it was great to hit a few of our favorite spots with a top-notch team of limnologists, microbiologists, geochemists, and engineers.
