“…O nce considered inhospitable to life, in recent decades icy environments on Earth have been found that preserve organic material and even harbor active microbial communities (Priscu et al, 1998(Priscu et al, , 1999Siegert et al, 2001;Priscu, 2005;Santibáñez et al, 2005Santibáñez et al, , 2018Krembs et al, 2011;Uhlig et al, 2015). Glacial ice on Earth is known to contain organic material (Barnes et al, 2003;Barletta et al, 2012), including bacteria, algae, viruses, plant fragments, pollen grains, and black carbon.…”