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)