Mars Mission: Curiosity - Page 62

NASA’s steady reconnaissance of Mars with the Curiosity rover has produced another major discovery: evidence of an ancient lake — with water that could plausibly be described as drinkable — that was part of a long-standing, wet environment that could have supported simple forms of life.

Scientists have known that the young Mars was more Earthlike than the desert planet we see today, but this is the best evidence yet that Mars had swimming holes that stuck around for thousands or perhaps millions of years. (It would have been very chilly — bring a wet suit.)

On December 10 2013 05:13 TriO wrote:


Kind of obvious considering there are river beds on mars similar to earth grand canyons. Hence water and with water there's potential life.

On December 10 2013 18:23 Manit0u wrote:


How do they know it's water though? What if those river beds were created by a different kind of fluid? What if all the lakes/rivers there were highly sulphorous or something?

I'd hold up with the "potential life" statements until more evidence is provided.

Dark streaks that hint at seasonally flowing water have been spotted near the equator of Mars1. The potentially habitable oases are enticing targets for research. But spacecraft will probably have to steer clear of them unless the craft are carefully sterilized — a costly safeguard against interplanetary contamination that may rule out the sites for exploration.

River-like valleys attest to the flow of water on ancient Mars, but today the planet is dry and has an atmosphere that is too thin to support liquid water on the surface for long. However, intriguing clues suggest that water may still run across the surface from time to time.

In 2011, for example, researchers who analysed images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft observed dark streaks a few metres wide that appeared and lengthened at the warmest time of the year, then faded in cooler seasons, reappearing in subsequent years2. "This behaviour is easy to understand if these are seeps of water," says planetary scientist Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who led that study. "Water will darken most soils."

The streaks, known as recurring slope lineae, initially were found at seven sites in Mars's southern mid-latitudes. The water may have come from ice trapped about a metre below the surface; indeed, the MRO has spotted such ice in fresh impact craters at those latitudes.

On December 10 2013 05:13 TriO wrote:


Kind of obvious considering there are river beds on mars similar to earth grand canyons. Hence water and with water there's potential life.

On April 09 2014 21:13 Superouman wrote:

Most likely a cosmic ray hitting the right camera. The left camera doesn't have this artifact.

On April 09 2014 21:18 Gorsameth wrote:
yes... its obviously aliens. Could never be anything else.

It's been two years since NASA's Curiosity rover made its nail-biting touchdown on Mars, and the six-wheeled, SUV-sized robot has found the hoped-for evidence that the Red Planet was once habitable for life as we know it. So ... mission accomplished?

"For the entire Curiosity team, the big moment is yet to come," said science writer Marc Kaufman, the author of "Mars Up Close," a book about the $2.5 billion mission.

That big moment has everything to do with the 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain that Curiosity is just now nearing — known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp. The mountain's layers of rock appear to record billions of years' worth of the planet's geological history, and could reveal the presence of organic carbons.

Would that prove life existed on ancient Mars, or perhaps exists even today? No. But it would mark a major advance in the centuries-old debate about life's chances beyond Earth.

Space.com contributor Rod Pyle, who tells the tale of the rover mission and the team behind it in a book titled "Curiosity," admits that NASA's latest Red Planet quest seems a bit schizophrenic at the two-year mark.

In the weeks and months ahead, more mighty things are likely to be on tap, including evidence of organic carbon-based chemicals on Mars and unprecedented observations of Comet Siding Spring's close approach to Mars (in concert with orbiters such as NASA's Maven spacecraft).

The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla, who is working on her own book about Curiosity's mission, said she'll be on the watch for those times when Curiosity interrupts its trek to study sites of scientific interest along the way to Mount Sharp, especially if the robot fires up the drill that's mounted on its robotic arm. "Drilling always tells you that they think it's worthwhile to invest the time it takes to drill," she told NBC News.

Once Curiosity gets to Mount Sharp, geologists hope to use the rover's instruments to trace the changes recorded in the rocks, ranging from an age when it was warmer, wetter and more Earthlike, more than 3 billion years ago ... through a volcanically active transition period ... to the cold, dry environment we see today. That kind of wide-ranging geological record just isn't available on Earth, because Mother Nature erased it long ago.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.

"This temporary increase in methane -- sharply up and then back down -- tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, a member of the Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."

Researchers used Curiosity's onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory a dozen times in a 20-month period to sniff methane in the atmosphere. During two of those months, in late 2013 and early 2014, four measurements averaged seven parts per billion. Before and after that, readings averaged only one-tenth that level.

Curiosity also detected different Martian organic chemicals in powder drilled from a rock dubbed Cumberland, the first definitive detection of organics in surface materials of Mars. These Martian organics could either have formed on Mars or been delivered to Mars by meteorites.

Organic molecules, which contain carbon and usually hydrogen, are chemical building blocks of life, although they can exist without the presence of life. Curiosity's findings from analyzing samples of atmosphere and rock powder do not reveal whether Mars has ever harbored living microbes, but the findings do shed light on a chemically active modern Mars and on favorable conditions for life on ancient Mars.

"We will keep working on the puzzles these findings present," said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Can we learn more about the active chemistry causing such fluctuations in the amount of methane in the atmosphere? Can we choose rock targets where identifiable organics have been preserved?"

Researchers worked many months to determine whether any of the organic material detected in the Cumberland sample was truly Martian. Curiosity's SAM lab detected in several samples some organic carbon compounds that were, in fact, transported from Earth inside the rover. However, extensive testing and analysis yielded confidence in the detection of Martian organics.