Acknowledgements
This free course was written by Vic Pearson, Michael Macey, Claire Batty and Karen Olsson-Francis and first published in October 2025.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:
Images
Course image: Sergey Nivens; Shutterstock
Figure 1a): NASA/Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and VIIRS day-night band data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership; Figure 1b): NASA
Figure 2: image ESA - P. Carril
Figures 3, 4, 24 and 27: NASA
Figures 5 and 22: image ESA
Figure 6: NASA/Keegan Barber
Figures 7, 14, 15, 16 and 25: The Open University
Analogue sites slideshow: Slide 1 (Figure 8): Macey, M.C., Fox-Powell, M., Ramkissoon, N.K. et al. The identification of sulfide oxidation as a potential metabolism driving primary production on late Noachian Mars. Sci Rep 10, 10941 (2020)., https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by/ 4.0/; Slide 2 : (Fgure 9) courtesy of Velislava Ilieva; Slide 3 (Figure 10): Courtesy of Daniel Loy; Slide 4 (Figure 11): courtesy of Hannah Cooper; Slide 5 (Figure 12): NASA/MSFC
Figure 13: © TEM of D. radiodurans acquired in the laboratory of Michael Daly, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, USA
Figure 17: NASA/GSFC/Timothy P. McClanahan
Figure 18: Article 9 of the Outer Space Treaty; 'United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs
Figure 19: taken from: Microbial Interactions in Sustainability and Astrobiology (MISA) Lab; https://misalab.org/ research/ mars-planetary-protection/
Figure 20: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Figure 21: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Figure 23: (c) The Airstream Company
Figure 26: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Figures 28a © unknown; 28b courtesy of Space Park, Leicester
Figure 29: image ESA-Guus Schoonewille
Figure 30: courtesy of Velislave Ilieve
Figure 31: Courtesy of Claire Batty
Figures 32 (a) and (b): courtesy of Zoe Emerald
Figure 33: AI generated image using Adobe Firefly
Audio/Visual
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