 This dark environment looks like Mars. In a way, it is for planetary scientist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. His specialty is the study of life in the universe. Instead of traveling to Mars, McKay does the next best thing. He leads a diversified team of scientists into the remote drive valleys of western Antarctica, near the Ross Ice Chef. They spend a couple of months a year probing the seemingly lifeless environment for clues to its makeup. Studying this barren and frozen ecosystem allows scientists to approach the investigation of Mars with a more educated eye. The Drive Valley region is a place where temperatures dip to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and are rarely above freezing in the summer. What startled researchers when they began their studies about 10 years ago was the discovery that microorganisms were living in the sandstone boulders along the valley wall. The research has shifted to studies beneath the rugged surface, which is actually a frozen lake. It's hardly what most of us consider a lake, but nonetheless, after taking ice samples and melting a dye hole 13 feet down into the ice, scientists will find its liquid component. In ten below zero weather, a diver dons scuba gear in preparation for the dive. Sample tubes are taken down in order to collect pores from the lake bottom. Once inside the ice manifold, the light diminishes very quickly. The absence of swimming aquatic life is immediately noticed in the crystal clear water. At moderate depths, a thin carpet of algae can be seen covering the bottom. These primitive organisms, called stromatolites in their fossilized state, may offer one of the best clues about life on another planet, according to Chris McKenney. We think that these organisms are very good analog to what we think might have existed on Mars like and even to what we think might have existed on Earth. We're studying these organisms to see how they produce energy, capturing sunlight, flow synthesis, how they respire, where they get their nutrients, and how just the whole ecology of a lake that's under a perennial constant ice cover. Photographic evidence from NASA Viking spacecraft suggests that Mars had lakes at one time. Comparative studies in Antarctica tell us that life-sustaining water could have existed below frozen lakes on early Mars. Since Mars died an early death, it may hold good fossil evidence of first life on the mysterious red planet. A sort of life's last stand on Mars could have been a swim in one of these frozen lakes. And so if we study the Antarctic lakes, we might be able to come up with methods to find evidence for this last biological event on Mars. Using the frozen lakes of Antarctica as a laboratory is an important first step in the future exploration of Mars. Knowing where life might have existed on the dead planet may lead us to the first evidence of other life there and other places in our galaxy.