Rare Meteorites Found on Earth are from Mars, Curiosity Rover Confirms

Image: NASA

Some meteorites that drop in on Earth come from Mars.
We have suspected this for years, but this week, NASA's Curiosity rover confirmed their origin.


Using Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument — a highly sophisticated onboard chemistry lab that can conduct hundreds of the same experiments we do on Earth — Curiosity rover found two forms of argon, a noble gas that doesn't react to other compounds. This is an important gas because it tells the straightforward history of Mars, which was once a wet planet similar to Earth.
While argon exists throughout our solar system, on Mars, the ratio of heavy to light argon is skewed due to the loss of its atmosphere over billions of years. This fundamentally changed it into the cold, desert-like planet that exists today.


Modern Mars is filled with the heavy form, Argon 38. The lighter form, Argon 36, rose to the top where it then easily escaped. In a sense, Curiosity uncovered the planet's hidden signature by pinning down the ratio of these two forms at 4:2. To put that into context, NASA's Viking landers estimated the planet's atmospheric value to be in the range of 4:7.


"We really nailed it," said lead study author Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who published the work in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "This direct reading from Mars settles the case with all Martian meteorites," he said.br />

Out of the tens of thousands of known meteorites to slam into Earth, less than 50 have been identified with Mars origins.


The study appears in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

There have been 40 Missions to Mars over the past 50 years. [Infographic]

Credit: Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco, National Geographic and 5W Infographics


Almost 200 launches and their destinations detailed in one image.



Full size: http://bit.ly/15LeQi2

Mars Rover Curiosity Detects No Methane in Martian Gas Samples at Ground Level: Hope of Life on Mars Fades.

Researchers using an unusually sensitive gas detector aboard the Mars Curiosity robot rover reported that they can't find any methane in the thin Martian air, dealing a blow to hopes that life today might be lurking in the soil of the cold, arid world.

"Methane on Mars would be an exciting find because most of the methane on Earth comes from life-related processes," such as microbial activity or organic decay, said planetary scientist Malynda Chizek at New Mexico State University who studies the planet's atmosphere. "Everyone wants to be the one who discovers life on Mars."

Upon the first close inspection at ground level on Mars, however, the crucial methane gas was nowhere to be found by Mars Rover Curiosity.

More Mars probes, including India's first mission to the planet and a $1 billion European effort with Russia, are poised to search for methane there in the years ahead. In light of the new finding, some researchers now doubt these efforts will find any evidence of the life-related gas.

Since 2003, astronomers using Earth-based telescopes and readings from a European satellite orbiting Mars have reported detecting periodic plumes of methane on Mars—up to 50 parts per billion in the air. Although often challenged by other researchers, those readings raised expectations among astrobiologists that microbes might be at work on the planet.

Mean while back on the planet Earth: Professor Steven Benner "Life on Earth came from elements that arrived from Mars on a Martian meteorite,.”

An element believed to be crucial to the origin of life would only have been available on the surface of the Red Planet, it is claimed. Geochemist Professor Steven Benner outlined his theory that the “seeds” of life probably arrived on Earth in meteorites blasted off Mars by impacts or volcanic eruptions.

All living things are made from organic matter, but simply adding energy to organic molecules will not create life. Instead, left to themselves, organic molecules become something more like tar or asphalt, said Prof Benner told the conference. He described the oxidised mineral form of the element molybdenum, believed to be a catalyst that fostered the development of organic molecules into the first living structures.

“It’s only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidised that it is able to influence how early life formed,” said Prof Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the USA. “This form of molybdenum couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. “It’s yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet.”

He added: “Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn to tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting. “Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidised form of molybdenum was there too.”

Study: Life On Earth May Have Started On Mars American Voices • Opinion • ISSUE 49•36 • Sep 3, 2013 5315337According to scientist Steven Benner, conditions on Mars 3 billion years ago were more conducive than those on Earth to creating one of the earliest molecules of life, RNA, and that meteorites may have transported these molecules to Earth’s surface. What do you think?

NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity begins extended exploration on trip to Mount Sharp

NASA’s rover Curiosity begins extended exploration on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is beginning a long-awaited, 5-mile-long journey across the terrain of the red planet to begin exploring a rocky area known as Mount Sharp, 11 months after the rover arrived on the planet's surface, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “With drives on July 4 and July 7, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has departed its last science target in the 'Glenelg' area and commenced a many-month overland journey to the base of the mission's main destination, Mount Sharp,” NASA reported in a July 8 announcement.

Curiosity has already checked off its main mission goal, finding that a site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago. The car-size rover — which is nuclear- rather than solar-powered — has embarked on a months-long trek to the base of a 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) mountain called Mount Sharp.

NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover has reached the site where it will wait out its sixth Red Planet winter.

Opportunity — which touched down on Mars in January 2004 just after its twin, Spirit, arrived on the planet — is studying rocks at the foot of a location called Solander Point, whose north-facing slope will allow the robot to tilt its solar panels toward the sun during the coming southern Martian winter.

"We made it," Opportunity project scientist Matt Golombek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "The drives went well, and Opportunity is right next to Solander Point. We know we could be on that north-facing slope with a one-day drive, but we don't need to go there yet.

The days are getting shorter in Mars' southern hemisphere, and the amount of sunlight available to the solar-powered Opportunity will reach a minimum in mid-February 2014 (the southern winter solstice occurs on Feb. 14).

Still Rocking and Rolling afer ONE YEAR on Mars! :Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California can still produce a pretty compelling movie

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)uploaded a video that shows what the past year has been like for the Curiosity rover in under 2 minutes. Black and white video of dirt being drilled and analyzed might not be interesting to many; however, Curiosity is slowly traveling towards the planet's own Mount Sharpe, yet the landscape looks like many of the deserts on Earth. It's rocky, barren, and bathed in a bright and expansive sky. Watch the video here with a heavy Rock and Roll sound track... and it might take your breath away. (Space.com version with music) http://youtu.be/p83pSCm5ZMU

Mars Rover Curiosity was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on its way to Mount Sharp

Mars Rover Curiosity  was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on its way to Mount Sharp

Mars Rover Curiosity Rover captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) as it makes its way to Mount Sharp, leaving a weaving set of tracks in its wake. The image released today by NASA scientists, shows Rover making its way across the planet, leaving tracks back to a dark, blast spot on the surface of Mars. That spot called the 'Bradbury Landing' is where Mars Rover Curiosity landed on Mars, named after the late science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

Mars rover Curiosity captures 1.3-gigapixel panorama of the Red Planet

"The image, titled Billion-Pixel View from Curiosity at Rocknest, was assembled from almost 900 photos captured by Curiosity between October 5 and November 16 last year. 850 photos came from Mastcam 100, the 100mm (telescopic) camera atop Curiosity’s mast, with 21 supplementary images provided by Mastcam 34 (the wide-angle camera that sits next to Mastcam 100) and 25 black-and-white frames from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera. Because the photos were captured over a number of days, you can see quite a few variations caused by the angle of the Sun and the dusty atmosphere. As an interesting aside, it’s fun to note that each Mastcam is only equipped with a 2-megapixel sensor — proof that the megapixel myth is indeed a myth. 1.3 billion pixels, in case you were wondering, is 1.3 gigapixels — or 1,300 megapixels."


You can spin and zoom in on a 360-degree panorama of the Curiosity rover's surroundings at Rocknest on Mars, thanks to an interactive Photosynth viewer. A guided tour points you to some of the hot spots. Click on the image to go to the viewer, or try out the embedded version at Extreme Tech which goes into auto mode and flies across the middle photo panel, zooming in on the highlighted features displayed in the side panel captions:  http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/159902-curiosity-captures-1-3-gigapixel-panorama-of-mars

PASADENA, Calif. -- A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine one part of the Red Planet in great detail.

The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's route.
The 1.3-billion-pixel image is available for perusal with pan and zoom tools at: http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/ and a scaled down version (~159MB) is available for direct download here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16919 .


The full-circle scene surrounds the site where Curiosity collected its first scoops of dusty sand at a windblown patch called "Rocknest," and extends to Mount Sharp on the horizon.

"It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras' capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."


Deen assembled the product using 850 frames from the telephoto camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera instrument, supplemented with 21 frames from the Mastcam's wider-angle camera and 25 black-and-white frames -- mostly of the rover itself -- from the Navigation Camera. The images were taken on several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Raw single-frame images received from Curiosity are promptly posted on a public website at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ . Mars fans worldwide have used those images to assemble mosaic views, including at least one gigapixel scene.

The new mosaic from NASA shows illumination effects from variations in the time of day for pieces of the mosaic. It also shows variations in the clarity of the atmosphere due to variable dustiness during the month while the images were acquired.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life.
Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Navigation Camera and the rover.

More information about the mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

For more information about the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory, see: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/mipex.html .

Image Caption: Curiosity Points to Mount Sharp. Curiosity unstowed the robotic arm on Aug. 20 and aimed it directly at her Martian drive destination – Mount Sharp. This mosaic of the robotic arm was assembled from navigation camera images from Sols 2, 12 and 14 and shows 18,000 foot high Mount Sharp in the background and the shadow of the martian robot’s head at center. Curiosity will search for hydrated minerals using the robotic arm and a neutron detector on the body. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo




Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96932/curiosity-takes-aim-at-martian-destination-mount-sharp/#ixzz2VRMSEQLu
After investigating for ten months at the plains, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is set to move toward the mountains in search for favorable habitats that could be suitable for microbial life.
According to deputy project scientist Joy Crisp from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the journey to “Mount Sharp” will be a long one. "This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp does not mean we are not going to investigate interesting features along the way."
"We're going to keep our eyes open as we drive and if we in fact drive past something that's amazing, we might actually turn around and go back and check it out, but there's nothing that we see from orbit that's like some super-compelling clue to life or something like that," Crisp said.
"What we have is a real desire to get to Mount Sharp.”

Considered as the “biggest turning point since landing” of Curiosity, NASA hopes that investigations at “Mount Sharp” will unearth new evidence of life-friendly habitats on Mars. From the images of Mount Sharp taken from orbit and images Curiosity has taken from a distance, scientists have figured out many layers in the area, which may offer significant information on how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved.

Scientists said the Mars Science Laboratory mission has already accomplished its main science objective. Analysis of rock powder from the first drilled rock target, "John Klein," provided evidence that an ancient environment in Gale Crater had favorable conditions for microbial life -- the essential elemental ingredients, energy and ponded water that was neither too acidic nor too briny.

Ageing Mars rover Opportunity has found evidence that the conditions for ancient life once existed on the Red planet.

Above NASA Photo: Preliminary interpretation points to

clay mineral content  due to intensive alteration by water.

Mars Rover Opprotunity has been wandering on Mars since 2004, and it is still producing useful science.
Its remarkable longevity has astounded and delighted Nasa officials, who initially expected that it would last for just 90 Martian days. Instead it is continuing to roll along the surface, 37 times longer than anybody thought it would.

Its latest discovery is one of its most exciting, Nasa officials said: an area of rock which was clearly weathered by large amounts of water, indicating that the conditions for life once existed on the planet.
The exposed  rock ( called "Esperance") is unlike any the rover has previously found, fractured and weathered by conditions that were "possibly favorable for life", Nasa said. The new pictures were taken at Cape York, an area on the rim of the massive Endeavour crater.

Could Radiation Harm Astronauts Traveling to Mars?

Astronauts who travel to Mars one day could be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during their trip, even if shielding techniques are used, a new study shows.




When the Mars Science Laboratory launched on Nov. 26, 2011, it began a 350-million-mile (560 million kilometers) trip to the surface of the Red Planet. During its voyage, a group of researchers, including Southwest Research Institute scientist Cary Zeitlin, monitored exactly how much radiation a piece of science hardware on the Mars rover Curiosity was exposed to over the 253-day journey from Earth to Mars.

"In space, it's between a 100 and 1,000 times higher dose rate [of radiation] than on Earth," Zeitlin noted. "It's highly uncertain what the health risk is from these exposures."

"In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days," said Dr. Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division and lead author of Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for publication in the journal Science on May 31.


"Understanding the radiation environment inside a spacecraft carrying humans to Mars or other deep space destinations is critical for planning future crewed missions," Zeitlin said. "Based on RAD measurements, unless propulsion systems advance rapidly, a large share of mission radiation exposure will be during outbound and return travel, when the spacecraft and its inhabitants will be exposed to the radiation environment in interplanetary space, shielded only by the spacecraft itself."
SEE ALSO: Could Radiation Harm Astronauts Traveling to Mars? (Video)

Zeitlin, whose study is detailed in the journal Science this week, collected the data with his team by turning on the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument while Curiosity was in flight. The instrument was active from 10 days after launch until about three weeks before landing.

Curiosity is back, baby!

Feast your eyes on the latest Mars panorama, shared generously by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo (and based on the cool imagery from NASA and JPL-Caltech).



http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/23/17431884-mars-curiosity-rover-gets-back-to-sending-snapshots?lite

Is there life on Mars? Why the question still eludes NASA...

Is there life on Mars?
Why the question still eludes us after 40 years of  NASA discovery on Mars?

 NASA is slowly learning where to look for microbes on the Red Planet, but there are no answers yet

 By Carl Franzen

"For NASA, nearly 40 years after it first landed on Mars, it remains too early to make that call. The agency right now is just concerned with proving habitability, which the Curiosity rover seems to have effectively done. NASA's next mission to Mars, an orbital craft called MAVEN, is due to launch later this year to study Mars's atmosphere. The mission after that, InSight, due to launch in 2016, will be another lander that will bore deeper into Mars than even Curiosity can, revealing yet more data on Mars' past. Still, it's doubtful either of these missions will settle the question of life once and for all."

READ all of the article at : http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/14/4100578/life-on-mars-still-elusive-after-curiosity-viking-other-discoveries

The Chances of Life Being in Mars' History Just Got Better.

This image released by NASA shows the Curiosity rover holding a scoop of powdered rock on Mars. The rover recently drilled into a Martian rock for the first time and transferred a pinch of powder to its instruments to analyze the chemical makeup. Credit NASA

Mars's Gale Crater was habitable in its distant past, perhaps during the same period in which microbial life was establishing itself on Earth between 3 billion and 4 billion years ago.

The issue of habitability is "in the bag," said John Grotzinger, a planetary geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and the mission's lead scientist, during a press briefing announcing the results today, March 12, 2013.

The minerals in the tiny, gray, ground-rock sample exposed by Curiosity's drill speak of abundant standing water, conditions neither too acidic or too alkaline for life, and the minerals that would have provided a ready energy source for microbes, if any had been there.

The water in the Gale Crater  being explored by Curiosity would have been "so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," Grotzinger said.   Did Mars ever host environments suitable for life?   Yes is the conclusion scientists have reached after NASA's Mars rover Curiosity analyzed the first sample ever culled from deep in a rock on another planet. Curiosity used a first-of-its-kind drill to extract the sample.

NASA's Curiosity rover has drilled into a Martian rock and collected samples, marking the first time any robot has ever performed this complicated maneuver on the surface of another planet.

At the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called "John Klein" where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars. The drilling took place on Feb. 8, 2013.

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.


The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary bedrock, can be seen in images and other data Curiosity beamed to Earth Saturday. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet environments. In pursuit of that evidence, the rover will use its laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill.


"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."



For the next several days, ground controllers will command the rover's arm to carry out a series of steps to process the sample, ultimately delivering portions to the instruments inside.



"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill cognizant engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.



Rock powder generated during drilling travels up flutes on the bit. The bit assembly has chambers to hold the powder until it can be transferred to the sample-handling mechanisms of the rover's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device.



Before the rock powder is analyzed, some will be used to scour traces of material that may have been deposited onto the hardware while the rover was still on Earth, despite thorough cleaning before launch.



"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," said JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer. "Then we'll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample."



"Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program," said JPL's Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system. "To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth."



Inside the sample-handling device, the powder will be vibrated once or twice over a sieve that screens out any particles larger than six-thousandths of an inch (150 microns) across. Small portions of the sieved sample will fall through ports on the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. These instruments then will begin the much-anticipated detailed analysis.



The rock Curiosity drilled is called "John Klein" in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. Drilling for a sample is the last new activity for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, which is using the car-size Curiosity rover to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for life.



JPL manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.



For images and more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .



You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .



Guy Webster 818-354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov



Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov



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