NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover: Organics Possibly Present

This image illustrates possible ways methane might be added to Mars' atmosphere (sources) and removed from the atmosphere (sinks). 

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has detected fluctuations in methane concentration in the atmosphere, implying both types of activity occur on modern Mars. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SAM-GSFC/Univ. of Michigan

NASA's Curiosity Mars 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, and 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 harboured 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 (Caltech).

"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.

NASA Mars 2020 Rover: SHERLOC to micro-map Mars minerals and carbon rings

This diagram shows components of the investigations payload for NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission. 

Mars 2020 is a mission concept that NASA announced in late 2012 to re-use the basic engineering of Mars Science Laboratory to send a different rover to Mars, with new objectives and instruments, launching in 2020.

Credit: NASA

An ultraviolet-light instrument on the robotic arm of NASA's Mars 2020 rover will use two types of ultraviolet-light spectroscopy, plus a versatile camera, to help meet the mission's ambitious goals, including a search for signs of past life on Mars and selection of rock samples for possible return to Earth.

It is called SHERLOC, for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals.

"This instrument uses two distinct detection strategies," said its principal investigator, Luther Beegle of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"It can detect an important class of carbon molecules with high sensitivity, and it also identifies minerals that provide information about ancient aqueous environments."

SHERLOC will shine a tiny dot of ultraviolet laser light at a target. This causes two different spectral phenomena to occur, which the instrument captures for analysis.

The first is a distinctive fluorescence, or glow, from molecules that contain rings of carbon atoms. Such molecules may be clues to whether evidence of past life has been preserved.

The second is an effect called Raman scattering, which can identify certain minerals, including ones formed from evaporation of salty water, and organic compounds.

This dual use enables powerful analysis of many different compounds on the identical spot.

A moving mirror in the instrument will shift pointing of the ultraviolet laser beam in a scanning pattern to provide a map of the ingredients at a microscopic scale.

The laser beam has a diameter of 50 microns; about half the thickness of a piece of paper. It will provide information on that scale within a target area about half the breadth of a dime.

This illustration depicts the mechanism and conceptual research targets for an instrument named Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, or SHERLOC. 

This instrument has been selected as one of seven investigations for the payload of NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission. 

SHERLOC will be a spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and use an ultraviolet laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect organic compounds. 

NASA's Mars 2020 rover is a mission concept that NASA announced in late 2012 to re-use the basic engineering of Mars Science Laboratory to send a different rover to Mars, with new objectives and instruments, launching in 2020. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera

In addition, the instrument will include a contextual camera utilizing hardware originally developed by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

This context imager will enable researchers to correlate the composition information with visible features in the target, resulting in more information than composition alone.

Beegle said, "We'll be able not just to detect these chemicals and minerals with high sensitivity, but we will produce powerful chemical maps."

"For example, we can see whether organics are clumped together or diffuse, and we can correlate minerals with visible veins or grains in the rock."

"This also allows us to integrate our results with the other instruments for even more informational content on the samples."

NASA announced selection of SHERLOC and six other investigations for the Mars 2020 rover's payload on July 31, 2014.

Mars 2020 is a mission concept that NASA announced in late 2012 to re-use the basic engineering of Mars Science Laboratory to send a different rover to Mars, with new objectives and instruments, launching in 2020. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission will be based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed almost two years ago, and currently is operating on Mars.

The new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct geological assessments of the rover's landing site, determine the potential habitability of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life.

Scientists will use the Mars 2020 rover to identify and select a collection of rock and soil samples that will be stored for potential return to Earth by a future mission.

The Mars 2020 mission is responsive to the science objectives recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.

The Mars 2020 rover also will help advance our knowledge of how future human explorers could use natural resources available on the surface of the Red Planet.

An ability to live off the Martian land would transform future exploration of the planet. Designers of future human expeditions can use this mission to understand the hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate technology to process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce oxygen.

These experiments will help engineers learn how to use Martian resources to produce oxygen for human respiration and potentially for use as an oxidizer for rocket fuel.

NASA Cassini nears 100th Titan flyby with a look back

This artist’s concept shows a possible model of Titan’s internal structure that incorporates data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. 

In this model, Titan is fully differentiated, which means the denser core of the moon has separated from its outer parts. 

This model proposes a core consisting entirely of water-bearing rocks and a subsurface ocean of liquid water. 

The mantle, in this image, is made of icy layers, one that is a layer of high-pressure ice closer to the core and an outer ice shell on top of the sub-surface ocean. 

Credit: A. D. Fortes/UCL/STFC

Ten years ago, we knew Titan as a fuzzy orange ball about the size of Mercury. We knew it had a nitrogen atmosphere—the only known world with a thick nitrogen atmosphere besides Earth but what might lie beneath the hazy air was still just a guess.

On March 6, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will swoop down within 933 miles (1,500 kilometers) of Titan to conduct its 100th flyby of the Saturn moon.

Each flyby gives us a little more knowledge of Titan and its striking similarities to our world.

Even with its cold surface temperatures of minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (94 kelvins), Titan is like early Earth in a deep freeze.

Since its 2004 arrival at Saturn, Cassini's radar instrument has identified remarkable surface features on Titan.

The features include lakes and seas made of liquid methane and ethane, which are larger than North America's Great Lakes, and an extensive layer of liquid water deep beneath the surface.

Organic molecules abound in Titan's atmosphere, formed from the breakup of methane by solar radiation.

Michael Malaska

A recent innovation was the discovery that radar could be used to determine the depth of a Titan sea.

"It's something we didn't think we could do before," said Michael Malaska, an affiliate of the Cassini radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"The radar can measure the depth by receiving two different bounces: one from the surface and one from the bottom of the sea."

"This technique was used to determine that Ligeia Mare, the second largest sea on Titan, is about 160 meters [525 feet] deep."

"When coupled with some laboratory experiments, it gives us information about the composition of the liquid in Ligeia Mare, too."

As spring turns to summer in Titan's northern hemisphere for the first time since Cassini arrived at Saturn, scientists are looking forward to entering potentially the most exciting time for Titan weather - with waves and winds picking up.

With increasing sunlight, the north polar lakes and seas can now be seen in near-infrared images, enabling scientists to learn more about their composition and giving them clues about the surrounding terrain.

Jonathan Lunine

"Methane is not only in the atmosphere, but probably in the crust," said Jonathan Lunine, a scientist on the Cassini mission at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

"It's a hint there are organics not only in Titan's air and on the surface, but even in the deep interior, where liquid water exists as well."

"Organics are the building blocks of life, and if they are in contact with liquid water, there could be a chance of finding some form of life."

Linda Spilker

Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL, speculated on the type of life that could exist.

"The astrobiological potential for Titan is two-fold," she said. "Could a unique form of methane-based life exist in Titan's liquid lakes and seas? With a global ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust, could life exist in Titan's subsurface ocean?"

Although the official Cassini mission name for this flyby is T-99, it is, in fact, the 100th targeted Titan flyby of the mission.

Why the discrepancy? An extra flyby was inserted early in the mission, after the Titan flybys had been named.

Hawaii Astrobiologists find Martian clay contains Chemical Organics

Electron microscope image showing the 700-million-year-old Martian clay veins containing boron (100 µm = one tenth of a millimeter).

Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa NASA Astrobiology Institute (UHNAI) have discovered high concentrations of boron in a Martian meteorite.

When present in its oxidized form (borate), boron may have played a key role in the formation of RNA, one of the building blocks for life.

The work was published on June 6 in PLOS One.

The Antarctic Search for Meteorites team found the Martian meteorite used in this study in Antarctica during its 2009-2010 field season.

The minerals it contains, as well as its chemical composition, clearly show that it is of Martian origin.

Using the ion microprobe in the W. M. Keck Cosmochemistry Laboratory at UH, the team was able to analyze veins of Martian clay in the meteorite.

After ruling out contamination from Earth, they determined boron abundances in these clays are over ten times higher than in any previously measured meteorite.

"Borates may have been important for the origin of life on Earth because they can stabilize ribose, a crucial component of RNA. In early life RNA is thought to have been the informational precursor to DNA," said James Stephenson, a UHNAI postdoctoral fellow.

RNA may have been the first molecule to store information and pass it on to the next generation, a mechanism crucial for evolution.

Although life has now evolved a sophisticated mechanism to synthesize RNA, the first RNA molecules must have been made without such help.

One of the most difficult steps in making RNA nonbiologically is the formation of the RNA sugar component, ribose. Previous laboratory tests have shown that without borate the chemicals available on the early Earth fail to build ribose.

However, in the presence of borate, ribose is spontaneously produced and stabilized.

This work was born from the uniquely interdisciplinary environment of UHNAI. The lead authors on the paper, Stephenson, an evolutionary biologist, and Lydia Hallis, a cosmochemist who is also a UHNAI postdoctoral fellow, first came up with the idea over an after-work beer.

"Given that boron has been implicated in the emergence of life, I had assumed that it was well characterized in meteorites," said Stephenson.

"Discussing this with Dr. Hallis, I found out that it was barely studied. I was shocked and excited. She then informed me that both the samples and the specialized machinery needed to analyze them were available at UH."

More information: 
Stephenson, J. D., Hallis, L. J., Nagashima K., and Freeland, S. J. 2013, "Boron Enrichment in Martian Clay," PLoS ONE 8(6): e64624. dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064624

NASA Mars Opportunity discovers clays favourable to Martian biology

The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called “Esperance,” which was inspected by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

Data from the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) indicate that Esperance’s composition is higher in aluminum and silica, and lower in calcium and iron, than other rocks Opportunity has examined in more than nine years on Mars. 

Preliminary interpretation points to clay mineral content due to intensive alteration by water. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona 

Now nearly a decade into her planned 3 month only expedition to Mars, NASA's longest living rover Opportunity, struck gold and has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favourable to ancient Martian (organic) biology – and she has set sail hunting for a motherlode of new clues amongst fabulous looking terrain.

Barely two weeks ago in mid-May 2013, Opportunity's analysis of a new rock target named "Esperance" confirmed that it is composed of a "clay that had been intensely altered by relatively neutral pH water – representing the most favorable conditions for biology that Opportunity has yet seen in the rock histories it has encountered," NASA said in a statement.

The finding of a fractured rock loaded with clay minerals and ravaged by flowing liquid water in which life could have thrived amounts to a scientific home run for the golf cart sized rover!

"Water that moved through fractures during this rock's history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen," said the mission's principal investigator Prof. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.

The robot made the discovery at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called "Cape York" – which she has just departed on a southerly heading trekking around the eroded rim of the huge crater named "Endeavour."

"Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking."

Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.

Close-Up of ‘Esperance’ After Abrasion by Opportunity 

This mosaic of four frames shot by the microscopic imager on the robotic arm of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a rock target called “Esperance” after some of the rock’s surface had been removed by Opportunity’s rock abrasion tool, or RAT. 

The component images were taken on Sol 3305 on Mars (May 11, 2013). 

The area shown is about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) across. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity: Complex Chemistry at Rocknest

This is a view of the third (left) and fourth (right) trenches made by the 1.6-inch-wide scoop on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in October 2012. 

The image shows some of the properties of the "Rocknest" wind drift sand. The upper surface of the drift is covered by coarse sand grains approximately 0.02 to 0.06 inches in size. Beneath the crust surface is finer sand, which is darker brown.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity can’t yet confirm any organic compounds on the Red Planet, NASA scientists said today--but the rover is seeing some intriguing chemicals, which will lead to further careful analysis about whether its home in Gale Crater could have played host to life.

“SAM has no definitive detection to report of organic compounds,” said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator for the SAM instrument, which stands for Sample Analysis at Mars.

The instrument did see some carbon-containing material--it’s just not clear whether the carbon in it comes from Mars, or whether Curiosity toted it from Earth.

What’s more, at least some of the detected material was most likely created in chemical reactions inside Curiosity’s belly, as the SAM instrument’s oven baked sand samples.

The results mark the first soil sample analysis from the SAM lab suite, the most complex chemistry lab ever sent to another world. “We really consider this a terrific milestone,” Mahaffy said at a news conference Monday.

The presence of perchlorate may be the biggest news from the press conference, which kicked off the day at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco.

The Mars Phoenix lander also saw evidence of this chlorine-oxygen compound, which could conceivably be used as an energy source by Martian microbes.

The analysis of these chemicals--which involves baking samples inside SAM’s oven and measuring the vapors that come out--in and of itself created new chemicals which the sensitive instruments picked up. Among those newly formed chemicals were some chlorinated methane compounds.

The chlorine is from Mars, Mahaffy said. The carbon’s origin is still unclear. Scientists will try to figure it out by measuring isotope ratios and making other measurements.

Other results from Curiosity’s first few months on Mars include some analysis of the soil and rocks, which are apparently very similar in both chemical composition and appearance to rocks in other spots on the planet.

The Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity rovers saw very similar soil in different locations. At Curiosity’s present location, Rocknest, a site in Gale Crater, the soil is about half volcanic material and half crystalline materials, like glass.

Interestingly, the water bound up in this soil is much, much heavier than water in Earth’s oceans, Mahaffy said.

Scientists, Curiosity followers and Marsphiles around the world eagerly awaited Monday’s announcement because of earlier rumours and speculation that the rover team was about to share something “Earth-shaking.”

Curiosity is not designed to find life, just evidence of environments that could have played host to it at some point.

Finding organic molecules would be an interesting step toward an eventual life-finding experiment. Organic compounds in this case means carbon-containing complex molecules, not something alive (or formerly alive).

These compounds rain down on all terrestrial planets and are found throughout space, and they do not necessarily indicate the presence of life.

For one small drift of sand, the SAM and CheMin (for Chemistry and Mineralogy) instruments did a whole lot of work, said Curiosity’s project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) in Pasadena.

“We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift,” he said in a statement.

A couple weeks ago, Grotzinger was quoted in a story by NPR saying some freshly downloaded data from SAM would be “one for the history books.”

This statement created great speculation about what the results could be, although the agency tried to manage the expectations downwards.

Grotzinger said today he was misunderstood, and that he meant that the continuity of data from SAM, and the mission as a whole, would be historic in its breadth and depth.

“I’ve learned that you have to be careful about what you say and even more careful about how you say it,” he told reporters Monday. “We work at the speed of science. The rest of the world works at the speed of Instagram.”