Mars rover Curiosity soil analysis: why no news still isn't bad news

Mars rover Curiosity soil analysis: why no news still isn't bad news - CSMonitor.com

Curiosity's SAM detected some simple hydrocarbons made up of chlorine and methane. Does that mean Martian-based organics are in the bag? The team suspects not, although it is conducting a thorough analysis. Surface soils are exposed to a range of radiation and chemicals in the atmosphere that tend to dismantle organic compounds.

The researchers say they suspect that the chlorine came from perchlorates in the soil, perhaps calcium perchlorate, Dr. Mahaffy says. Perchlorates are chlorine-based salts. The Phoenix Mars lander found perchlorates in abundance at its polar landing site in 2008.

The carbon in the methane is another story, however. It could represent residual contamination from Earth, despite extensive efforts to scrub the rovers before launch. Or the carbon could have come from the soil. But carbon in soils could be organic as well as inorganic. Indeed, Mahaffy holds out the possibility that the simples forms of chloromethane SAM detected could have formed during the analysis process, with carbon dioxide freed from the soil samples as they were heated serving as the source of the carbon. If the carbon is organic, researchers still have to figure out if the carbon is indigenous to Mars, or hitched a ride to the surface on micrometeoroids.

Given the various ways organic compounds can be destroyed on the Martian surface, "it's really going to be an exciting hunt ... over the course of this mission to find early environments that might be kind of protected from this harsh surface environment and really see what we can add to the organics story," Mahaffy says.

Mars just seems to have that effect on people.

The next news conference about the NASA Mars rover Curiosity will be held at 9 a.m. PST(12 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 3, in San Francisco at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). 

Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect. The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytic instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil. One class of substances Curiosity is checking for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life. At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics. - JPL NEWS RELEASE 2012-377b

As noted in an earlier posting here, the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said last week that preliminary data showed the possibility that the agency's Mars Science Laboratory  –  better knowed as Curiosity — had found signs of carbon-containing molecules as "one for the history books."

According to the above  JPL news release, there will be no major announcements Monday in San Francisco at the  annual meeting of American Geophysical Union. 

The science team is continuing to try and verify what the rover has found. "Carbon compounds are  a substance that's consistent with biological materials," says John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, the chief scientist on the rover team, but Grotzinger says it doesn't have to be biological materials; there are plenty of carbon-containing compounds that have nothing to do with life.

However, finding these carbon molecules would be exciting because of what it might say about the Martian environment where the rover is sitting at the bottom of Gale crater. If one kind of carbon can survive there, it might just be a place where carbon molecules that are related to living organisms could also survive as a kind of chemical fossil.

"There wouldn't be a field of paleontology unless you found the hot spots where things get preserved," Grotzinger says. The NASA Mars rover Curiosity  is looking for those hot spots; places where carbon-containing chemicals consistent with life might have been preserved and still exist. "[But] even if they have nothing to do with life, at least it tells us that this is the kind of environment that might have been favorable for preservation of something that could be a biological material," he says.

Even the possibility of finding carbon compounds on Mars causes excitement, which certainly is not true for every planet. In the current issue of the Journal Science, researchers reported they were virtually certain that had found large deposits of organic compounds on the planet Mercury, and that wasn't front page news. 

"I can tell you anytime when you find anything with Mars, it's a frenzy," says Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the Mercury researchers who also works on Mars.

Elon Musk doesn’t just want to send a person to Mars — he wants to send 80,000.

This still from a SpaceX mission concept video shows a Dragon space capsule landing on the surface of Mars. SpaceX's Dragon is a privately built space capsule to carry unmanned payloads, and eventually astronauts, into space. CREDIT: SpaceX

According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX gave details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16.


Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first private U.S. company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Musk has never been shy about his ambitions to take human colonists to another planet, mentioning in the past that he wants to provide flights to Mars for about $500,000 a person. But now he’s talking about building a small-city-sized settlement on the Red Planet, starting with a 10-person crew in the coming decades to begin establishing and building infrastructure.

"That first flight would be expensive and risky but once there are regular Mars flights, you can get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to move to Mars,” Musk told Space.com. "Then I think there are enough people who would pay that much to live on Mars to have it be a reasonable business case.”

Musk added that he sees the future 80,000-person colony as a public-private enterprise costing roughly $36 billion.

Science-fiction inspired plans are one thing. Musk still has many challenges ahead of him before such a scheme could become reality, including figuring out exactly how to deal with radiation on the way to Mars, how to land humans on the planet’s surface, and how to keep them alive once there. Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson interviewed Musk in the November issue, here he outlines a few ways that could help us get there: 
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/elon-musk-mars-colony/

For now, though, we'll have to wait to see what's got Mars rover scientists itching to say what they found.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity dug up five scoops of sand from a patch nicknamed "Rocknest." A suite of instruments called SAM analyzed Martian soil samples, but the findings have not yet been released. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

http://www.wbur.org/npr/165513016/big-news-from-mars-rover-scientists-mum-for-now

Scientists working on NASA's six-wheeled rover on Mars have a problem. But it's a good problem.


They have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.It's a bind scientists frequently find themselves in, because by their nature, scientists like to share their results. At the same time, they're cautious because no one likes to make a big announcement and then have to say "never mind."


They have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.


It's a bind scientists frequently find themselves in, because by their nature, scientists like to share their results. At the same time, they're cautious because no one likes to make a big announcement and then have to say "never mind."

The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission, says during my visit last week to his office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That's where data from SAM first arrive on Earth. "The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down," says Grotzinger.



SAM is a kind of miniature chemistry lab. Put a sample of Martian soil or rock or even air inside SAM, and it will tell you what the sample is made of.



Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something earthshaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.



Grotzinger can see the pained look on my face as I wait, hoping he'll tell me what the heck he's found, but he's not providing any more information.



So why doesn't Grotzinger want to share his exciting news? The main reason is caution. Grotzinger and his team were almost stung once before. When SAM analyzed an air sample, it looked like there was methane in it, and at least here on Earth, some methane comes from living organisms.



But Grotzinger says they held up announcing the finding because they wanted to be sure they were measuring Martian air, and not air brought along from the rover's launchpad at Cape Canaveral.



"We knew from the very beginning that we had this risk of having brought air from Florida. And we needed to diminish it and then make the measurement again," he says. And when they made the measurement again, the signs of methane disappeared.



Grotzinger says it will take several weeks before he and his team are ready to talk about their latest finding. In the meantime he'll fend off requests from pesky reporters, and probably from NASA brass as well. Like any big institution, NASA would love to trumpet a major finding, especially at a time when budget decisions are being made. Nothing succeeds like success, as the saying goes.



Richard Zare, a chemist at Stanford University, appreciates the uncomfortable position John Grotzinger is in. He's been there. In 1996, he was part of a team that reported finding organic compounds in a meteorite from Mars that landed in Antarctica. When the news came out, it caused a huge sensation because finding organic compounds in a Martian rock suggested the possibility at least that there was once life on Mars.



"You're bursting with a feeling that you want to share this information, and it's frustrating when you feel you can't talk about it, "says Zare.



It wasn't scientific caution that kept Zare from announcing his results. It was a rule many scientific journals enforce that says scientists are not allowed to talk about their research until the day it's officially published. Zare had to follow the rules if he wanted his paper to come out.



He did break down and tell his family. "I remember at the dinner table with great excitement explaining to my wife, Susan, and my daughter, Bethany, what it was we were doing," says Zare. And then he experienced something many parents can relate to when talking to their kids.

"Bethany looked at me and said, 'pass the ketchup.' So, not everybody was as excited as I was," he says.
Zare says in a way, scientists are like artists. Sharing what they do is a big part of why they get out of bed in the morning.


"How many composers would actually compose music if they were told no one else could listen to their compositions? How many painters would make a painting if they were told no one else could see them?" says Zare. It's the same for scientists. "The great joy of science is to be able to share it. And so you want to say, 'Isn't this interesting? Isn't that cool?' "

Was there Life on Mars?

Today, November 20, 2012, a discovery was made that N.A.S.A. is not ready to reveal to the public, but Curiosity chief scientist, John Grotzinger stated, “This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good”. They say that they are delaying their revelation to the public until they have an opportunity to check and recheck their data, but that they will be revealing this exciting news at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place December 3-7 in San Francisco.

This discovery was made by using Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, which is controlled by a robotic arm. Sam is Curiosity’s onboard chemistry lab, and it is capable of identifying organic compounds, which are the carbon containing building blocks of life. Sam obviously has detected something very interesting and exciting while taking and analyzing samples, and the excitement that is being presented suggests that whatever was found will not only answer all the questions we have had about life on Mars, but will change the way we view the planet that we have speculated about for centuries. It is exciting to know that we may finally have the answers that we have searched so long for.

This has been a great year for the scientific community and for the American people. We will be waiting for this exciting announcement with great anticipation. Congratulations N.A.S.A. on your new discovery, and thank you for all your hard work and dedication to this mission.

As always, thank you to my loyal readers, and if you enjoyed this article, please be sure repost the article to your Facebook or Twitter page so others can enjoy it. I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I hope you have a great day with your family and friends.

A special thank you goes out to Space.com  the facts for this article.

No Methane. No Life on Mars.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Rover Curiosity has  found no methane in the Martian atmosphere, making it unlikely that there is  life on Mars. Mars Rover Curiosity  took this self-portrait.

The methane discovery (or lack thereof) comes from the first analysis of Martian atmosphere, taken by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument aboard Curiosity. SAM took a small gulp of Martian air and analyzed it with the Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer and the Tunable Laser Spectrometer — and in both cases, the sensors failed to detect any methane. This does not mean that there’s no methane at all, but it means there is no measurable amount  methane per billion parts of Martian atmosphere.

The blueberries recently discovered by Opportunity — which is still chugging along after eight years, and with less fanfare than the rover-of-the-minute Curiosity

The above picture may not look like much, but it could be a huge deal. The photograph, taken by the Opportunity Rover at Mars’ Cape York site, shows iron spherules that researchers commonly refer to as “blueberries.” Similar formations are found here on Earth. The catch is that, here, they are formed with help from microbial organisms, suggesting that these unassuming iron marbles could be a telltale sign of ancient life on the red planet.

Typically just a couple millimeters across, iron blueberries are a pretty standard part of the Martian landscape, found on the ground of the Cape York site where Opportunity is doing its research or embedded in rock. They bear a distinct resemblance to the “Moqui marbles” found around the American southwest. Ranging in size rom BB pellets to cannonballs, Moqui marbles are not unlike geological M&Ms, consisting of a thin iron shell filled will sand.
A study published earlier this month in the journal Geology found strong evidence that the marbles are not a purely geological oddity, but were formed with an assist from microbes. That finding is a strong suggestion that the Moqui marbles’ Martian cousins may be a good candidate for indicators that Mars once sustained microbial life.
The blueberries recently discovered by Opportunity — which is still chugging along after eight years, and with less fanfare than the rover-of-the-minute Curiosity — are in an area not known for its iron content, but for the possibility that it may have clay deposits, suggesting it may once have been a site for flowing water. Between those two findings, Opportunity could certainly be in worse places to look for ancient martian microbes. The search for those signs is still akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, of course, but the haystack may have just gotten a lot smaller.
(via PhysOrg, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, image courtesy of NASA)

Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation.



The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.


"Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars. Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars -- or if the planet can sustain life in the future," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

"This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030's, and today's landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal."



Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.



"The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph," said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld. "My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the mission's team."



Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms.



"Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars," said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The landing takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives."



Confirmation of Curiosity's successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network.



Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks from a distance. The rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover.



To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.



The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.



For more information on the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/marshttp://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mslhttp://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .



Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity And http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .



Guy Webster / D.C. Agle 818-354-6278 / 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov / agle@jpl.nasa.gov



Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Go team USA! Curiosity has landed on Mars!

The United States has a confidence problem. While the economy seems to be slowly improving, many Americans believe our best days are behind us. We are constantly barraged with stories of our inevitable decline - and of the rise of other nations at our expense. Yet the United States can still maintain its position as the leader in technology and innovation, and space exploration capabilities and technology can play a key role.

Carberry is executive director and co-founder of Explore Mars Inc.

When provided with a far-reaching, ambitious mission, NASA is capable of having a much more dramatic impact on our national morale - and, as a result, our economy - than any other federal agency. A bold and sustainable space program has the power to inspire our students to enter into science and engineering studies, create highly skilled jobs that will fuel our economy for years and stimulate the national psyche.

To fully harness this potential, the United States should commit to the goal of landing a crew on Mars by the year 2030. A human mission to the Red Planet would be one of the most important and inspirational events in world history. It would show in no uncertain terms that we again are taking forward-looking, inspired steps in science. The world would take notice. To gauge the impact a Mars landing could have, one need recall only that when Mars Pathfinder landed in 1997, the NASA websites received 550 million hits in a single week - at a time when far fewer people had Internet service.

Imagine the level of online activity that would be wrought by a human Mars mission. The prospects for innovation over the upcoming decades are numerous and would give the United States a chance to take the helm during what could be one of the most exciting periods in human history.

Computer technology, nanotechnology, medical science, biochemistry and many other scientific disciplines are moving at break-neck speed in laboratories, universities, hospitals and companies all across the country. This means commercial companies are competing like never before to help create efficient new space capabilities. But this progress could hit a brick wall if we don't assure the private sector and the public that we have a skilled and well-educated work force capable of keeping this momentum going.

One way to create assurance is to guarantee a sufficient number of American students enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Space exploration can encourage STEM in a way no other activity can. What we need is a catalyst to motivate our leaders and the nation to commit to ambitious new space goals.

A potential catalyst for change took place this August 6. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) called Curiosity landed on Mars. MSL is by far the most ambitious mission to ever be sent to another planet. It should not only send back the most dramatic images ever taken on the surface of Mars, it could move us much closer to learning whether Mars has ever been able to sustain life. The landing also comes close to the 50th anniversary, in September, of President John F. Kennedy's famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech at Rice University.

 It is time we recommitted ourselves to courageous and difficult goals. It is time to explore our Solar System and beyound!

 To learn more about the Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity Rover, please visit www.GetCurious.com.

This week NASA released an ultra-high-resolution view of the frigid Martian landscape captured by the only rover currently operating on the red planet. “The view provides … a spectacularly detailed view of the largest impact crater that we’ve driven to yet,” said planetary scientist Jim Bell of Arizona State University in a press release July 5. The solar-powered, golf-cart-sized rover, called Opportunity, wrapped up exploration of the half-mile-wide Victoria Crater in August 2008. It then rolled for the next three years to reach the 14-mile-wide Endeavour Crater. But the plucky robot must hunker down during Martian winters that last six Earth months, as Opportunity needs to have enough power to warm its fragile electronics. So from Dec. 21, 2011 through May 8, 2012, NASA instructed the robot to stay put and take 817 images. The space agency stitched those photos together to craft a near-wraparound image of Opportunity’s overwintering spot, a rocky outcrop near the 4-billion-year-old Endeavour Crater that scientists named “Greeley Haven.” NASA’s next car-sized rover called Curiosity arrives at Mars Aug. 5, but it won’t have to overwinter like Opportunity. Instead of relying on feeble sunlight, it will use a thermoelectric nuclear battery to provide it with decades’ worth of power. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University [high-resolution version]

NASA's Curiosity rover, carried by the Mars Science Laboratory

NASA Curiosity rover started on a 354 million mile trip to Mars last November around my birthday. The rover is set to land on the surface of Mars on August 6 which is one day after my son Jordan's birthday this year... it's arrival on Mars gets closer...


NASA's Curiosity rover, carried by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft, will land near the Martian equator at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5, (1:31 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6).


When I was teaching , I imagined teaching two semesters of what was then called the Integration of Physics and Chemistry (IPC) to my students with a theme of Martian Exploration. Started a blog to capture information for that project: http://themissionismars.blogspot.com/ . You are reading that blog here.


Yes, I was hoping that one of the missions might find life on the Red Planet. That child hood dream is a bit faded now: the more we have learned with our actual Martian Exploration, the less likely it seems that we will find any signs of life on Mars in my waning life time.


We still might find a microbial life form in some relatively warm wet spot on Mars... or beneath the surface, but I have come to believe that we humans will become the Martians, as in Ray Bradbury's (http://www.raybradbury.com/about.html) THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. We, humans will move out across the Solar System as in Ben Bova's (http://www.benbova.net/) Grand Tour books; and colonize and explot the Moon with Robert A. Heinlein's (http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/index.htm) private enterprise model... and we will reach and transform Mars itself as in Kim Stanley Robinson's MARS TRILOGY (http://kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Mars_trilogy).



But I getting ahead of the news... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

NASA has re-targeted the Rover from a large landing ellipse of 20 km x 25 km. That larger landing ellipse certainly gave a lot of room for error, but NASA has re-thought that landing zone.

NASA is now targeting a significantly smaller landing ellipse that will put the rover closer to the base of Mount Sharp on the Martian surface. The new landing ellipse on the surface is significantly smaller at 7 km x 20 km. NASA feels hitting the smaller landing area will be possible thanks to the high-precision landing system that the rover is using.

The rover has thrusters that will guide the high-velocity phase of entry into the atmosphere of Mars. This is the first rover to use this technology, which was unavailable on previous missions to Mars. The goal of the smaller landing ellipse is to reduce the time it takes for the rover to roll over to its primary science location. The smaller landing zone, and less distance the rover needs to travel also reduces the chance of any incidents during travel time. NASA scientists are hoping Curiosity will find layered rock deposits at the site to provide new insight into past environmental conditions on the surface of Mars.