Edmond A GrinGrin has an academic background in hydrogeology, and for 30 years worked on dam and hydropower projects. His familiarity with the characteristics of lakes and rivers on Earth makes him especially valuable when it comes to looking for similar featureson Mars, where NASA's exploration strategy has been to "follow the water." Grin, together with his wife, Cabrol, championed Gusev crater - an apparent lake basin - as the landing site for the Spirit rover. A new three-year project in which Grin is involved, called "Life in the Atacama", will demonstrate that autonomous robot rovers can reliably detect primitive microorganisms. The rovers will be field tested in Chile's Atacama desert, an earthly analog for the landscapes of Mars. Read More Read Less