Oceans Across Space and Time (OAST) is a multi-institutional NASA funded grant tasked with exploring Earth as an analog of relic and modern oceans in our solar system. In particular OAST studies hypersaline environments that may represent extremes where life could nonetheless strive on places like Mars, Enceladus, or Europa. At present, the analyses of samples from South Bay Salt Works, a solar saltern, along with saline transient lakes of Western Australia, and the deep hypersaline anoxic Orca basin are underway using capillary electrophoresis (CE) paired with laser induced fluorescence (LIF) as well as microchip CE paired with high resolution mass spectrometry. In addition to this, ATP assays are used to assess microbial activity in these extreme environments.
