Despite the pandemic, NASA is on track to launch its Mars rover, Perseverance, this July from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its central mission will be to search for evidence of previous life on Mars.

She is sparkling. Determined. Brilliant. Arya Udry is 32 years old. This native Valaisanne, whose mother lives in Hérémence and who grew up between Brittany and neighboring France, is now a professor of geology and planetology at the University of Nevada, in Las Vegas. A dazzling journey for the one who, while crawling on the mountains of Valais, dreamed of being an astronaut. "To realize this dream, you had to either become a scientist or an airplane pilot."

Despite their microscopic size and simplistic cells, bacteria are some of the hardiest life forms around. In recent years, scientists have uncovered these stalwart microbes in environments as extreme as the searing hot springs in Yellowstone National Park and the acidic, metal-rich waters that drain out of mines.

IN 2013, SCIENTISTS were stunned to find microbes thriving deep inside volcanic rocks beneath the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest, buried under more than 870 feet of sediment. The rocks were on the flank of the volcanic rift where they were born, and they were still young and hot enough to drive intense chemical reactions with the seawater, from which the microbes derived their energy.

To go big, sometimes you have to start small.

UNLV researchers have been awarded a $700,000 grant to bring a new technology to campus that will enable researchers to study stalagmites in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park, volcanoes in Hawaii and even rocks from Mars.