NASA Mars Rover Curiosity: Trend in Water Presence

Hydration Map, Based on Mastcam Spectra, for 'Knorr' Rock Target: On this image of the rock target "Knorr," colour coding maps the amount of mineral hydration indicated by a ratio of near-infrared reflectance intensities measured by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ MSSS/ ASU

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.

Last week, the rover's science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favorable for microbial life.

Additional findings presented today (March 18) at a news briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling.

Using infrared-imaging capability of a camera on the rover and an instrument that shoots neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen, researchers have found more hydration of minerals near the clay-bearing rock than at locations Curiosity visited earlier.

The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) can also serve as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool, reported Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe.

"Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam's near-infrared filters."

Ratios of brightness in different Mastcam near-infrared wavelengths can indicate the presence of some hydrated minerals.

The technique was used to check rocks in the "Yellowknife Bay" area where Curiosity's drill last month collected the first powder from the interior of a rock on Mars.

Some rocks in Yellowknife Bay are crisscrossed with bright veins.

"With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area," said Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

"These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix."

The Russian-made Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on Curiosity detects hydrogen beneath the rover.

At the rover's very dry study area on Mars, the detected hydrogen is mainly in water molecules bound into minerals.

"We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay," said DAN Deputy Principal Investigator Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute, Moscow.

"More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation."

Findings presented today from the Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity's arm indicate that the wet environmental processes that produced clay at Yellowknife Bay did so without much change in the overall mix of chemical elements present.

The elemental composition of the outcrop Curiosity drilled into matches the composition of basalt. For example, it has basalt-like proportions of silicon, aluminum, magnesium and iron.

Basalt is the most common rock type on Mars. It is igneous, but it is also thought to be the parent material for sedimentary rocks Curiosity has examined.

"The elemental composition of rocks in Yellowknife Bay wasn't changed much by mineral alteration," said Curiosity science team member Mariek Schmidt of Brock University, Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

A dust coating on rocks had made the composition detected by APXS not quite a match for basalt until Curiosity used a brush to sweep the dust away. After that, APXS saw less sulfur.

"By removing the dust, we've got a better reading that pushes the classification toward basaltic composition," Schmidt said.

The sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay likely formed when original basaltic rocks were broken into fragments, transported, re-deposited as sedimentary particles, and mineralogically altered by exposure to water.

NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Hits New Snag

The location of a rock target called "Knorr" is indicated on this self-portrait of the Curiosity rover in the "Yellowknife Bay" area. 

This self-portrait is a mosaic of images taken by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Feb. 3, 2013). 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A new glitch on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has forced the vehicle to stay in safe mode longer than planned, stalling science operations for another couple of days, scientists said today (March 18).

The Curiosity rover had paused in its scientific investigation of the Red Planet in late February, when corrupted memory files forced engineers to switch the rover's main operations from its "A-side" computer to its "B-side" backup.

Just as the computer switch was sorted out, though, mission managers decided to put the rover back in standby mode on March 5 to protect it from possible radiation that could be released by a major solar flare pointed toward Mars.

Curiosity had come out of safe mode following that scare, but normal science operations had not yet resumed.

Now, a computer file error has forced the rover into safe mode again.

"This is not something which is rare or extraordinary,"Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger said today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. "It does mean that science has to stand down for a couple more days."

The latest issue has to do with some of the rover's files that were scheduled for deletion. One of those files was connected to a file still in use by the spacecraft, so the deletion process prompted an error that sent the rover into safe mode again, preventing the rover from resuming science as planned.

"If not for the latest safing, we would have been back in action today," Grotzinger said. "The expectation is, it's going to take a couple of sols [Martian days] to resolve this one."

Despite these technical setbacks, though, Curiosity's team of scientists has been forging ahead with analysis of the wealth of data collected by the rover so far. Those measurements allowed the researchers to declare last week the mission had found proof that a spot on ancient Mars would have provided habitable conditions to microbes, had they been present during the planet's past.