Archive: https://archive.today/A2l6p From the post: >>Whether anything ever lived on Mars is unknown. And the present environment, with harsh temperatures, intense radiation, and a sparse atmosphere, isn’t exactly propitious for life. Despite the red planet’s brutality, lichens that inhabit some of the harshest environments on Earth could possibly survive there. Lichens are symbionts, or two organisms that are in a cooperative relationship. There is a fungal component (most are about 90 percent fungus) and a photosynthetic component (algae or cyanobacteria). To see if some species of lichen had what it takes to survive on Mars, a team of researchers led by botanist Kaja Skubała used the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences to expose the lichen species Diploschistes muscorum and Cetrarea aculeata to simulate Mars conditions.