In the search for life on Mars and other extraterrestrial bodies or in our attempts to identify biological traces in the most ancient rock record of Earth, one of the biggest problems facing us is how to recognize life or the remains of ancient life in a context very different from our planet's modern biological examples. Specific chemistries or biological properties may well be inapplicable to extraterrestrial conditions or ancient Earth environments. Thus, we need to develop an arsenal of

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... niques that are of broader applicability. The notion of patterning created in some fashion by biological processes and properties may provide such a generalized property of biological systems no matter what the incidentals of chemistry or environmental conditions. One approach to recognizing these kinds of patterns is to look at apparently organized arrangements created and left by life in extreme environments here on Earth, especially at various spatial scales, different geologies, and biogeochemical circumstances. Introduction A key aspect of planning a space mission is to set scientific mission objectives with the ability to adapt them based on observations and mission situations. The search for extraterrestrial life is a major scientific objective, but the exact nature of that life and how to confirm it constitutes a major debate [9] . A further problem in the search for extraterrestrial life is how to select specific areas that we want to investigate more intensively? Photo surveys, geology, and knowledge of biology here on Earth can take us to a likely general area, but, unlike a dynamic process like that which