GROUNDBREAKING studies searching for life on Mars could be bolstered by work at a new laboratory at a potash mine, The Northern Echo can reveal.

A research base is being built at The Boulby Underground Science Facility, at ICL Fertilizers’ site in Boulby, east Cleveland.

The £1.8m laboratory will open later this year, allowing scientists to continue work with a host of highly-skilled organisations, including experts from Nasa.

The space agency tests equipment on Boulby’s salt-laden reserves, and its robots’ work in the North-East could lead to their deployment to the Red Planet on exploration programmes.

The work is another exciting venture for ICL’s site after The Northern Echo last week revealed it aims to spend £50m on a granulation plant to ramp up production of the fertiliser polyhalite.

Funded by the government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the new laboratory will replace the existing Palmer Lab, which welcomes officials from the European Space Agency and various UK and international educational institutions, including Durham, Edinburgh and Sheffield universities.

Operating with an onsite team of just six people, the research site is internationally recognised as a multi-discipline base, overseeing projects from astrophysics, such as the search for undiscovered elements of the universe, known as Dark Matter, to studies of geology, climate, the environment, life on Earth and beyond.

Professor Sean Paling, head of Boulby Underground Science Facility, told The Northern Echo why Nasa see Boulby as an integral part of its work on Mars exploration.

He said: “The environment down the mine is an ancient layer of salt and life is still in there. It is really interesting for giving us an understanding of how life forms on Earth and for how life might be on other planets.”

Prof Paling said the new laboratory will be an exciting development for the region, bringing a global focus to the North-East.

He added: “The existing laboratory is 15-years-old, and is coming to the end of its working life. Moving into the new lab will allow us to do the work that we already are, and more.

“The Boulby underground lab is a little treasure trove of science and great for the North-East. It is a local and a national science asset, and generously supported by our mine hosts ICL, which makes us a unique science and industry collaboration.

“Boulby is a special place for science; we are one of just a handful of deep underground science sites around the world, and the work we do has great importance in academic science, industry and the environment.”

The new laboratory’s opening will come as ICL ramps up its focus on polyhalite.

Bosses last week revealed £50m plans for a granulation factory, which could open in three years and turn hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fine polyhalite into granules for agricultural use.

The firm has also reiterated proposals to submit an extension to the mine, taking it to 2063.