NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover finds Iron Meteorite called "Lebanon."

This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called "Lebanon," similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.  Lebanon is about 2 yards or 2 meters wide (left to right, from this angle). The smaller piece in the foreground is called "Lebanon B."

This view combines a series of high-resolution circular images taken by the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument with color and context from rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam).  The component images were taken during the 640th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (May 25, 2014).

The imaging shows angular shaped cavities on the surface of the rock. One possible explanation is that they resulted from preferential erosion along crystalline boundaries within the metal of the rock.  Another possibility is that these cavities once contained olivine crystals, which can be found in a rare type of stony-iron meteorites called pallasites, thought to have been formed near the core-mantle boundary within an asteroid.

Iron meteorites are not rare among meteorites found on Earth, but they are less common than stony meteorites. On Mars, iron meteorites dominate the small number of meteorites that have been found. Part of the explanation could come from the resistance of iron meteorites to erosion processes on Mars.

ChemCam is one of 10 instruments in Curiosity's science payload. The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency (CNES), the University of Toulouse and the French national research agency (CNRS). More information about ChemCam is available at http://www.msl-chemcam.com .  The rover's MastCam was built by and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS/IAS/MSSS

NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars in 2014 and was initially slated for a 90-day mission. Ten years and 24.07 miles later

NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars in 2014 and was initially slated for a 90-day mission. Ten years and 24.07 miles later (that's pretty far for a slow-moving rover), it's still fully operational and conducting science experiments on the Red Planet.

An odd-looking bit of rock mysteriously appeared in front of Opportunity rover, waiting out the Martian winter, taken by Opportunity Mars rover on Sol (Martian day) 3540 or January 8 Earth time, according to NASA’s website.

Left: a photo taken 3528 days after the Opportunity rover arrival to Mars. Right: the exact same spot 12 Mars days later. Notice the difference? NASA JPL scientists did too: "It's about the size of a jelly doughnut. It was a total surprise, we were like 'wait a second, that wasn't there before, it can't be right. Oh my god! It wasn't there before!' We were absolutely startled."

An odd-looking bit of rock mysteriously appeared in front of Opportunity rover in the beginning of January as the rover, waiting out the Martian winter, has not moved since the end of November, according to NASA. The rock suddenly appeared on photographs taken by Opportunity Mars rover on Sol (Martian day) 3540 or January 8 Earth time, according to NASA’s website. Photographs previously taken on Sol 3536 showed no trace of the rock. The body was named 'Pinnacle Island', according to Opportunity’s Pancam database descriptions.

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.

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

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

The search for life on Mars – MOD involved in mission sims via PLRP

September 12th, 2011
by Chris Bergin, NASA
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/09/search-life-mars-mod-involved-mission-sims-via-plrp/

NASA’s Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) are continuing to expand their involvement in exploration training and simulation by working with the international Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) team on multi-hour missions – a precursor to deep space exploration missions, which will one day involve humans searching for signs of life on Mars.


PLRP – which began in 2008 – is a NASA and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) analog research program, which is ramping up its work in 2011 via the addition of new scientific, operational and technological objectives to its busy ten-day field deployment.

The Project is unique in focusing on both science and scientific operations research in the underwater environment of Kelly Lake, British Columbia, Canada. The PLRP team use DeepWorker submersible vehicles to explore, study and document rare freshwater carbonate rock formations that thrive in this lake, which in turn provides mission training opportunities for future deep space exploration.

The team are working on conducting safe, productive and discovery-based science in extreme environments. It is this knowledge that will form the basis of future exploration concepts for human research voyages to such destinations as near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and Mars.

This training not only allows for gaining experience in conducting the science, but also utilizing it to ask one of the most important questions which exploration is being tasked with – the potential finding of proof there was once life on Mars.

“The Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) is a NASA and CSA sponsored international, multidisciplinary, science and exploration effort to explain the origin of freshwater microbial in BC, Canada,” noted the August MOD presentation (available on L2). “Data trends provides information to identify signatures of ancient life on our own and other planets (for example Mars).”

The 60 strong team will be deeply involved in seven days of tasks, all tied into the upcoming October work to be conducted by the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission, along with the ongoing work being carried out by NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies (RATS) – both of which also now have MOD involvement.

“Single person submarines, scuba divers and other watercraft are used in around five hour exploration missions over seven days. Real time voice and video transmitted to science backroom team, CAPCOM, Flight Director and planning team in MCC (Mission Control Center),” added the presentation, showing where the MOD involvement will be, which includes a mobile, onsite, MCC.

“Provides an analog to human exploration missions (Mars or Asteroid) through methods developed at Pavilion & Kelly Lakes. Testing and simulating deep space communications and protocols.

Prototyping timeline viewer. Developing operational techniques. For the 2011 field season, customer requested real time planning support and a planning product for team situational awareness.”

As predicted by MOD Director Paul Hill, the team’s world class “Plan Train Fly (PTF)” approach is the obvious choice for such current missions, especially in light of MOD’s continued role in the end product, an actual deep space exploration mission.

Implemented MOD model of PLAN, TRAIN, FLY.

"PLAN: Developed a customer specific timeline and customized planning viewer for use on mobile devices (pre-mission, started Apr. 2011). Current ISS tools (Score) as a backbone for project specific planning products. Score Mobile (developed by ARC) at Kelly Lake as test bed for other exploration analogs,” listed the presentation.

“TRAIN: Inspired scientists to adopt an operational mindset. Introduced the roll of Flight Director and trained scientists to be Flight Directors. Instructed on uses of planning products. Instructed on communications techniques.

“FLY: Real time planning support through out the day’s ops. Improved efficiency of pilot time or resources. Provided situational awareness for all PLRP team members through Score Mobile. Assisted testing operations concepts in a NEA exploration environments (test bed for other analogs). Expanded operational knowledge base on maximizing science in exploration missions. Education and outreach.

With the PLRP team launching new tools – such as the Exploration Ground Data Systems developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center – the teams will be able to rapidly synthesize, manage and analyze large data sets, as well as plan and manage flight scheduling.

These tools also will be used to manage the “delayed communications” research that will build 50-second communication delays between the submarine pilot and the mission operations crew to simulate what it is like conducting science on asteroids with human explorers.

This “delayed comm” element is being utilized in MOD’s involvement with NEEMO and the Desert Rats.

MOD and PLRP will also use the new planning tools to better manage a dynamic and complex operations schedule, as well as gain a new degree of situational awareness about all field camp activities, with MOD sharing their expertise and experience gained from supporting mission operations for the space shuttle and International Space Station.

“Pushed the limits of current ISS tools in an exploration based environment. Developed prototype of timeline viewer tool (Score Mobile) for exploration missions. Kelly Lake 2011 field season used as test bed for other analogs,” added the MOD overview on their own benefits from being involved in the PLRP mission.

“Feeds into Next Gen viewer (NGPS). Demonstrated ability to provide operational services to a customer using the MOD model of Plan, Train, Fly. Grew knowledge base in order to provide better products and services to our future customers.

MOD also note that future work may include collaboration to incorporate a ‘Field Astronaut’ training concept for an ISS science experiment (ISTAR collaboration).

This year’s PLRP field team also includes a member from Google, who will help the team evolve its use of mapping activities and develop cutting-edge data integration platforms based on Google Earth.

NASA information added that in addition to achieving its science and technology goals, this year’s field test also will provide local teachers an opportunity to learn how a lake in their community will be used to train astronauts and scientists and prepare them for space exploration.

As previously summarized in the NEEMO overview, the first deep space exploration mission is likely to be to an asteroid, with the end goal set up for a crewed mission to Mars.

Mars Mission:

With the well-known uncertainty surrounding the long-term goals of the space program, no definitive mission planning has been created for a Mars mission. However, the post-Augustine Commission “Flexible Path” overviews did show what remains the only expansive review into a Mars mission outline of late.

Per the internal Flexible Path presentation – available on L2, and summarized in several articles – numerous HLVs (Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles – such as the Space Launch System) would launch the elements of the Mars Transport Vehicle (MTV) for assembly in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – of which there are several notional designs, all modular in appearance.

As overviewed in the presentation, a crew would undertake a mission of up to 650 days, with the opening target likely to be the Mars moon, Phobos.

“A human Mars Orbit/Phobos Mission represents an intermediate step between human exploration missions in near-Earth space and human missions to explore the surface of Mars,” opened the expansive section on the manned missions to Mars/Phobos.

“Key features could include demonstration of in-space hardware elements designed for Mars missions while accomplishing scientific and exploration objectives both at Mars and on Phobos.”

Such short-stay missions range from 550-650 days, with 30 to 40 days in the vicinity of Mars. Over 95 percent of the total mission time is spent in the deep-space interplanetary environment with the balance spent in the vicinity of Mars.

The reason Phobos is the likely first target of a Mars mission shows relevance to the science collection efforts being simulated by the missions taking place this year on Earth.

“The mystery of the origin of Phobos can be resolved, and its evolution since formation can be investigated by field geologists on site in contact with a larger team back on Earth. As a possible D-type (organics-rich with possible interior ice) asteroid, it offers science beyond what is readily available in the NEO population, and can shed light on the objects that delivered the initial inventory of water and organics to the surfaces of Earth and Mars,” the presentation continued.

“Returned samples would contain a record frozen very early in the formation of the solar system. The work would benefit significantly from a conjunction-class mission (540 days vs. 40 days at the target), since Phobos is a large and diverse body.

“Phobos has been a collector of ejected Martian surface material for billions of years. That material is a record of the history of early Mars that may not even be preserved on Mars itself due to weathering. Martian material should be readily recognizable by color for collection. These samples would be an important supplement to samples collected directly from the surface of Mars.

Challenges with communication from such a distant target are also cited, something which MOD will be gaining experience from via the NEEMO, Desert Rats and PLRP mission simulations.

Incidentally, the mission example used by the Flexible Path approach involves a fly-by of Venus on the return leg – and the closest humans have ever been to the Sun – along with possible flybys of several asteroids.

Regardless, such a mission becoming a reality remains many years away, with a huge amount of work and advances in human space flight required, even if the funding becomes available, likely resulting in such a mission being in the 2030s.

(As the shuttle fleet retire, NSF and L2 are providing full transition level coverage, available no where else on the internet, from Orion and SLS to ISS and COTS/CRS/CCDEV, to European and Russian vehicles.

(Click here to join L2: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/ )

This photomicrograph focuses on a large "biomorph" from a Mars meteorite
fragment known as Nakhla e4150ed. Its chemical spectrum appears to be primarily iron oxide but with a carbon content slightly greater than the underlying matrix.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Do rocks from Mars bear the tiny fossilized signs of life? Scientists who think so say they'll subject meteorites from the Red Planet to a new round of high-tech tests in hopes of adding to their evidence.

For years, only one meteorite has figured in the controversy: ALH84001, a rock that was blasted away from Mars 16 million years ago, floated through space and fell through Earth's atmosphere onto Antarctica about 13,000 years ago. Scientists reported in 1996 that the rock contained microscopic structures that looked like "nano-fossils," but skeptics said the structures could have been created by chemical rather than biological reactions.

In November, the scientists who were behind the earlier research reported fresh findings that they said answered many of the objections from the skeptics - and they said two other space rocks traced to Mars seemed to have "biomorph" structures similar to those found in ALH84001. Pictures of the biomorphs were spread across a couple of Web pages back then, but generated relatively little attention at the time.

Over the weekend, the Spaceflight Now Web site provided further details on what the scientists saw and what they think it means.

The team, headed by astrobiologist David McKay from NASA's Johnson Space Center, said that samples from ALH84001 and the two other meteorites - known as Nakhla (found in Egypt in 1911) and Yamato 596 (found in Antarctica in 2000) - would be analyzed with high-resolution electron microscopes as well as an ion microprobe system in the months ahead.

Such instruments are expected to provide much better information about the chemical composition of the samples - information that could show more definitively whether the processes giving rise to the biomorph structures were biological or strictly geological.

"We do not yet believe we have rigorously proven there is [or was] life on Mars," McKay told Spaceflight Now's Craig Covault. "But we do believe we are very, very close to proving there is or has been life there."

NASA could follow up on such findings with the Opportunity rover - which is due to start its seventh year on Mars this month. The search for signs of ancient life on Mars would be a job even more suited to the bigger, more capable Curiosity rover (a.k.a. Mars Science Laboratory), which is scheduled for launch in 2011. And if the evidence is really as strong as McKay hopes it will be, more Red Planet missions would likely be put on the fast track.

But there's always the chance that the evidence for life on Mars will remain inconclusive, even after the new, improved scientific tests. The Red Planet has been known to tease scientists before: You don't have to look any further than the Martian "canals" spotted in the 19th century, the Face on Mars photographed by the Viking 1 orbiter in 1976, the biology experiments conducted by the Viking landers, the Martian "banyan trees" touted by the late science-fiction guru Arthur C. Clarke, and the recurring reports about Martian methane.

Will biomorphs turn out to be the turning point in the search for life on Mars, or just another twist in a tangled tale? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below, and stay tuned for the next chapter in the "Life on Mars" story.

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Update for 9:30 p.m. ET: Several commenters have asked how we know that any of these space rocks came from Mars. The answer has to do with tiny pockets of gas that were found inside the meteorites. When the chemical makeup of the gas was analyzed, scientists discovered that it matched the unique signature of Martian atmosphere, as measured by the Viking landers back in the 1970s. ALH84001 was the first meteorite to be identified in this way, but other meteorites (including Nakhla and Yamato 596) have a similar signature. Check out this Web page for more about the signature of Martian atmosphere and other technical issues relating to ALH84001.

Even without the gas analysis, scientists can tell that the Mars meteorites are of alien origin. A few years ago, University of Hawaii planetary scientist Vicky Hamilton analyzed the mineral composition of ALH84001 and suggested that the rock was blown away from a region of Mars known as Eos Chasma, which is a branch of the planet's wide-ranging Valles Marineris canyon system. Valles Marineris would be a great place to look for life on Mars, if it weren't so darn hard to get down into.


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Life on Mars will have to wait til 1012 for USa

Scheduled to launch in the fall of 2011, Mars Science Laboratory is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Mars Science Laboratory is a rover that will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's "habitability."

Mars Science Laboratory will study Mars' habitability

LIFE ON MARS

To find out, the rover will carry the biggest, most advanced suite of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the martian surface. The rover will analyze dozens of samples scooped from the soil and drilled from rocks. The record of the planet's climate and geology is essentially "written in the rocks and soil" -- in their formation, structure, and chemical composition. The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and the local geologic setting in order to detect chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the martian environment was like in the past.

Mars Science Laboratory relies on innovative technologies

Mars Science Laboratory will rely on new technological innovations, especially for landing. The spacecraft will descend on a parachute and then, during the final seconds prior to landing, lower the upright rover on a tether to the surface, much like a sky crane. Once on the surface, the rover will be able to roll over obstacles up to 75 centimeters (29 inches) high and travel up to 90 meters (295 feet) per hour. On average, the rover is expected to travel about 30 meters (98 feet) per hour, based on power levels, slippage, steepness of the terrain, visibility, and other variables.

The rover will carry a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium's radioactive decay. This power source gives the mission an operating lifespan on Mars' surface of a full martian year (687 Earth days) or more, while also providing significantly greater mobility and operational flexibility, enhanced science payload capability, and exploration of a much larger range of latitudes and altitudes than was possible on previous missions to Mars.

Arriving at Mars in 2012, Mars Science Laboratory will serve as an entrée to the next decade of Mars exploration. It represents a huge step in Mars surface science and exploration capability because it will:

demonstrate the ability to land a very large, heavy rover to the surface of Mars (which could be used for a future Mars Sample Return mission that would collect rocks and soils and send them back to Earth for laboratory analysis)


demonstrate the ability to land more precisely in a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) landing circle


demonstrate long-range mobility on the surface of the red planet (5-20 kilometers or about 3 to 12 miles) for the collection of more diverse samples and studies.

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/overview/

Not quite Proof of Life on Mars... just not ruling out the possibility. Hmming, hydrogen peroxide extremophilic microbes?

The soil on Mars may indeed be teeming with microbes, according to a new interpretation of data first collected more than 30 years ago.

The search for life on Mars appeared to hit a dead end in 1976 when Viking landers touched down on the red planet and failed to detect biological activity.

There was another flurry of excitement a decade later, when Nasa thought it had found evidence of life in a Mars meteorite but doubts have since been cast on that finding.

Today, Joop Houtkooper from Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, Germany, will claim the Viking spacecraft may in fact have encountered signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface.

His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft with a geophysicist, Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, Pullman, suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin, he will tell the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany.

that is roughly comparable to biomass levels found in some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy bacteria and lichen. “It is interesting because one part per thousand is not a small amount,” Houtkooper said yesterday.

“We will have to find confirmatory evidence and see what kind of microbes these are and whether they are related to terrestrial microbes. It is a possibility that life has been transported from Earth to Mars or vice versa a long time ago.”

The discovery of microbes on Earth that can exist in environments previously thought too hostile has fuelled debate over extraterrestrial life.

Houtkooper believes Mars could be home to just such “extremophiles” – in this case, microbes whose cells are filled with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water. Such a mixture would provide clear benefits to organisms in the cold, dry Martian environment.

Its freezing point is as low as -56.5 C (depending on the concentration of peroxide); below that temperature it becomes firm but does not form cell-destroying crystals, as water ice does; and hydrogen peroxide is hygroscopic, which means it attracts water vapour from the atmosphere – a valuable trait on a planet where liquid water is rare.

Houtkooper believes their presence would account for unexplained rises in oxygen and carbon dioxide when NASA’s Viking landers incubated Martian soil.

He bases his calculation of the biomass of Martian soil on the assumption that these gases were produced during the breakdown of organic material.

Hydrogen peroxide is also a powerful oxidant. When released from dying cells, it would sharply lower the amount of organic material in their surroundings.

this would help explain why Viking’s gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer detected no organic compounds on the surface of Mars.

This result has also been questioned recently by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City University of Mexico, who reported that similar instruments and methodology are unable to detect organic compounds in places on Earth, such as Antarctic dry valleys, where we know soil microorganisms exist.

The twin spacecraft, Viking 1 and Viking II, landed on the Red Planet in 1976. They were equipped with detectors designed to test the Martian soil for evidence of life.

The main instrument, called the TV-GC-MS assay, rapidly heated and vaporised soil for analysis by a spectrometer.

Dr Navarro-Gonzales concluded: “The fact that no organic molecules were released .. during the analysis of the Mars soils does not demonstrate that there were no organic materials on the surface of Mars..”

“We suggest that the design of future organic instruments for Mars should include other methods to be able to detect extinct and or extant life.”

Life In The Universe Takes Orders From Space

Life In The Universe Takes Orders From Space: "Life In The Universe Takes Orders From Space
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2004) — A century ago, when biologists used to talk about the primordial soup from which all life on Earth came, they probably never imagined from how far away the ingredients may have come. Recent findings have the origins of life reaching far out from what was once considered 'the home planet.' Evolution on the early Earth may have been influenced by some pretty far-out stuff."



Life In The Universe Takes Orders From Space
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2004) — A century ago, when biologists used to talk about the primordial soup from which all life on Earth came, they probably never imagined from how far away the ingredients may have come. Recent findings have the origins of life reaching far out from what was once considered "the home planet." Evolution on the early Earth may have been influenced by some pretty far-out stuff.


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See also:
Plants & Animals
•Extreme Survival
•Cell Biology
•Evolutionary Biology
Space & Time
•Asteroids, Comets and Meteors
•Cosmology
•Astrophysics
Reference
•Meteorite
•Astrobiology
•Origin of life
•Phosphate
In a paper published this week in the journal Science, Arizona State University Chemistry Professor Sandra Pizzarello claims that materials from as far away as the interstellar media could possibly have played an active role in establishing the chemistry involved in the origin of life on this planet.

In the paper, Pizarello and her co-author Arthur L. Weber of the SETI Institute show that the exclusive chirality of the proteins and sugars of life on Earth - their tendency to be left- or right-handed, could in fact be due to the chemical contribution of the countless meteorites that struck the planet during its early history. This paper provides a plausible explanation for how, with a little help from outside, the chemistry of non-life - characterized by randomness and complexity - becomes the ordered and specific chemistry of life.

Pizzarello studies meteorites and the chemicals housed within them. A particular type of meteorite - carbonaceous chondrites - holds particular interest. Carbonaceous chondrites are very primitive, stony meteorites that contain organic carbon. These meteorites are rare, but also very exciting for chemists interested in the origins of life on Earth and in the solar system. They contain amino acids - the molecules that make up proteins, and an essential part of the chemistry of life.

According to Pizzarello, it has been known for the last century that there are large amounts of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen - the so-called biogenic elements - in the cosmos. And that it is reasonable to assume that these elements might have undergone some amount of chemical evolution before life even began.

According to Pizzarello, who studies meteorites from the collection at ASU (which has the largest university-owned collection in the world) the meteorites are the only evidence of chemical evolution scientists have in hand today. New techniques of meteorite analysis are leading to great breakthroughs in understanding where these meteorites came from and how they were formed. Even more exciting, work Pizzarello and her colleagues have recently published in Science explores what sort of contribution the chemical evolution represented by meteorites might have had on the early Earth.

The paper addresses what has been a basic difficulty in relating the chemical evolution represented by meteorites and the origin of terrestrial life on Earth. According to Pizzarello, this problem is that chemical evolution - what we see in meteorites - is characterized by randomness, while terrestrial life relies on specificity and selection. For example, the meteorites contain over 70 amino acids. A mere 20 amino acids make up life's proteins. "There is a fundamental difficulty in trying to figure out how you go from confusion and randomness to functionality and specificity," said Pizzarello.

So far, only one trait has been found to be similar, to some extent, between amino acids in meteorites and biopolymers, that of L-"handedness" (chirality). Because organic molecules can be asymmetric if they have different groups attached to a carbon atom, they can arrange spatially in two ways, like the two hands, and be either left or right handed. All proteins involved in life on Earth are made up of L-amino acids, while sugars involved in life have a D structure. Scientists call this "homochirality."

An overabundance (excess) of the L-form (the chemical name is enantiomer), has also been found in some amino acids in meteorites. Pizzarello and Weber devised an experiment to find whether or not the amino acids found with L-enantiomeric excess in meteorites could have transferred their asymmetry during organic syntheses on the early Earth . If so, the meteorites could have provided a constant influx of materials with this excess - especially during a period early in the solar system's history in which the Earth and other planets were pummeled heavily by meteorites.

Pizzarello and Weber report in Science that in fact their experiment succeeded in proving this possibility. In the laboratory, when performing sugar syntheses in water, using reactions that modeled what may have existed on the early Earth, the asymmetry in the amino acids led to a similar asymmetry in the sugars. Pizzarello and Weber thus were able to conclude that the delivery of material from outer space via meteorites - despite the seeming randomness and complexity of these materials - could in fact have "pushed" chemical evolution on Earth toward homochirality.

Pizzarello points out that these findings do not imply that life did not evolve on Earth, or that the meteorites were the only early source of enantiomeric excess - only that the steady contribution of these meteorites might have provided a nudge in the "right" (or, more accurately, "left") direction.