page_title: Mars habitability analogue environments on Earth
section_title: Movile Cave
hierarchical_section_title: Mars habitability analogue environments on Earth / Cave systems / Movile Cave
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Физическая карта Румынии. English: Relief map of Romania.
context_page_description: Mars habitability analogue environments on Earth are environments that share potentially relevant astrobiological conditions with Mars. These include sites that are analogues of potential subsurface habitats, and deep subsurface habitats.
  A few places on Earth, such as the hyper-arid core of the high Atacama Desert and the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica approach the dryness of current Mars surface conditions. In some parts of Antarctica, the only water available is in films of brine on salt / ice interfaces. There is life there, but it is rare, in low numbers, and often hidden below the surface of rocks, making the life hard to detect. Indeed, these sites are used for testing sensitivity of future life detection instruments for Mars, furthering the study of astrobiology, for instance, as a location to test microbes for their ability to survive on Mars, and as a way to study how Earth life copes in conditions that resemble conditions on Mars.
  Other analogues duplicate some of the conditions that may occur in particular locations on Mars. These include ice caves, the icy fumaroles of Mount Erebus, hot springs, or the sulfur rich mineral deposits of the Rio Tinto region in Spain.
context_section_description: Movile Caveis thought to have been isolated from the atmosphere and sunlight for 5.5 million years.
  Atmosphere rich in H
  ₂S and CO
  ₂ with 1% - 2% CH
  ₄ (methane)
  It does have some oxygen, 7-10% O
  ₂ in the cave atmosphere, compared to 21% O
  ₂ in the air
  Microbes rely mainly on sulfide and methane oxidation.
  Has 33 vertebrates and a wide range of indigenous microbes.
caption: Romania: Movile Cave
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