Rock formations in the Pilbara photographed by Dr Allwood. Dr Allwood suggested in 2006 the patterns of life in the Pilbara could also have happened on Mars. “If life flourished so quickly on Earth, there’s a good chance life could also have gained a toehold on Mars, even if it were habitable only briefly,” she wrote in 2006. New technology designed by Dr Allwood allows Mars rock to be investigated down to microscopic, grain-size portions of rock. That will give the new Mars Rover a better chance to prove life existed on Mars.

Rock formations in the Pilbara photographed by Dr Allwood. Dr Allwood began her geology studies at Queensland University of Technology, where she completed her Geosciences degree (with honours) in 2001. She completed her honours year in 2002, before shifting to Sydney’s Macquarie University for her 2006 doctorate, which attracted the science world’s attention with ground-breaking research in the PIlbara. Abigail Allwood. Credit:NASA Before this she went to primary school in Brisbane, then Brisbane’s Sommerville House private girls’ school.

Her 2006 research proved the geology of rocky reef that formed within the Pilbara 3.5 billion years ago held records of the Earth's oldest forms of life. It was this research that led her to be named as one of Australia's top 10 scientific minds by Cosmos magazine in 2006. In a media statement issued by the Australian Centre for Astrobiology in 2006, Abigail Allwood again made the link between her Pilbara research results and possible life on Mars. “One of the broader implications of this work is in helping us search for traces of life on Mars and other planets,” she said. That research was front page feature research in Nature, the acclaimed international science journal.

Her sister, Belinda Allwood from Cairns, confirmed these details about her sister, whom she described as “extraordinarily brilliant”, but “unassuming and very modest”. “She is now the first female principal investigator on a Mars Mission,” Belinda said. “And I think the first Australian citizen." Belinda Allwood said her sister – now a mother of one - was very proud of PIXL - her latest research work, because it will allow the Mars Rover to analyse very small – ‘grain-sized’ portions of rock. Dr Allwood’s new technology is part of the new “tool kit” that the Mars Rover 2020 mission will take to Mars.

“She has been working on it for four to five years now. I remember being over there visiting her in 2011 or 2012 and visiting her at JPL,” sister Belinda Allwood said. Belinda Allwood said she went to the Pilbara with her sister while she was researching rock samples before travelling to the States to work for NASA, seven years ago. “It was absolutely fascinating. She was looking at rock on the level of a ‘grain’ – ‘a grain of rock’ to look for traces of organic material,” she said. “So for her, the instruments that have been going up to Mars, they blast quite a large piece of rock to smithereens. “And just give a chemical analysis of that sample- which may be a centimetre across.

“What the machine that she has developed will now do is analyse rock on a really fine scale – the level of a grain, just a few microns.” “That is what PIXL will do. It can be aimed at ‘grains’ in rock, to see what the composition is like.” Seven years ago Dr Allwood's Pilbara research was groundbreaking, Belinda Allwood said. “When I was out there in the Pilbara visiting her, the rock was layered, but you could actually see the grains. “And she would point out to me, a black grain next to grey one.

“And she would say: ‘The black one might be organic in origin. It might be carbon-based’.” Her research ultimately suggested this was the case. “Her research put an end to decades of debate whether the Pilbara fossils were of organic origin," Belinda Allwood said. “They became accepted as the oldest fossilised evidence for life on earth, 3.43 billion years old.” Most recently - in 2013 Abigail Allwood received NASA’s Lew Allen Award for Excellence – awarded to recognise “significant individual accomplishments” in scientific research by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Now, NASA’s current rover, the Curiosity Rover – which has been on Mars for more almost two years - is beginning to look at bedrock of a landmark on Mars called Mount Sharp, located in Gale Crater. The Rover team is calling the outcrop "Pahrump Hills." NASA launched its first two Mars Rovers in 2004. It then launched the Mars Laboratory Curiosity Rover in 2011. Since August 6, 2012 – after it landed on Mars – the Curiosity Rover has been used effectively as a mobile robot to collect soil samples from Mars.