Mars rover says: 'good evening gale crater!'

[3870x2]

I would have posted the picture, but I would like the site to get credit for their work.

[micropage7]

Unclear whether substances are entirely Martian, scientists say



NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet.

Speaking at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, Curiosity mission leaders also said that the compound perchlorate—identified previously in polar Mars—appeared to also be present in Gale Crater, the site of Curiosity's exploration.

The possible discovery of organics—or carbon-based compounds bonded to hydrogen, also called hydrocarbons—could have major implications for the mission's search for more complex organic material.

It would not necessarily mean that life exists now or ever existed on Mars, but it makes the possibility of Martian life—especially long ago when the planet was wetter and warmer—somewhat greater, since available carbon is considered to be so important to all known biology.


The announcements came after several weeks of frenzied speculation about a "major discovery" by Curiosity on Mars. But project scientist John Grotzinger said that it remains too early to know whether Martian organics have been definitely discovered or if they're byproducts of contamination brought from Earth.

"When this data first came in, and then was confirmed in a second sample, we did have a hooting and hollering moment," he said.

"The enthusiasm we had was perhaps misunderstood. We're doing science at the pace of science, but news travels at a different speed."

Organics Detected Before on Mars

The organic compounds discovered—different combinations of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine—are the same or similar to chlorinated organics detected in the mid-1970s by the Viking landers.


At the time, the substances were written off as contamination brought from Earth, but now scientists know more about how the compounds could be formed on Mars. The big question remains whether the carbon found in the compounds is of Martian or Earthly origin.

Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of the instrument that may have found the simple organics—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)—said that while the findings were not "definitive," they were significant and would require a great deal of further study.

Mahaffy also said the discovery came as a surprise, since the soil sample involved was hardly a prime target in the organics search. In fact, the soil was scooped primarily to clean out the rover's mobile laboratory and soil-delivery systems.

Called Rocknest, the site is a collection of rocks with rippled sand around them—an environment not considered particularly promising for discovery. The Curiosity team has always thought it had a much better chance of finding the organics in clays and sulfate minerals known to be present at the base of Mount Sharp, located in the Gale Crater, where the rover will head early next year.


The rover has been at Rocknest for a month and has scooped sand and soil five times. It was the first site where virtually all the instruments on Curiosity were used, Grotzinger said, and all of them proved to be working well.

They also worked well in unison—with one instrument giving the surprising signal that the minerals in the soil were not all crystalline, which led to the intensive examination of the non-crystalline portion to see if it contained any organics.

Rover Team "Very Confident"

The simple organics detected by SAM were in the chloromethane family, which contains compounds that are sometimes used to clean electronic equipment. Because it was plausible that Viking could have brought the compounds to Mars as contamination, that conclusion was broadly accepted.

But in 2010, Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center and Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico published an influential paper describing how dichloromethane can be a byproduct of the heating of other organic material in the presence of the compound perchlorate.

They conducted the experiment because NASA's Phoenix mission had discovered large amounts of perchlorate in the northern polar soil of Mars, and it seems plausible that it would exist elsewhere on the planet.

"In terms of the SAM results, there are two important conclusions," said McKay, a scientist on the SAM team.

"The first is confirming the perchlorate story—that it's most likely there and seems to react at high temperatures with organic material to form the dichloromethane and other simple organics."

"The second is that we'll have to either find organics without perchlorates nearby, or find a way to get around that perchlorate wall that keeps us from identifying organics," he said.

Another SAM researcher, Danny Glavin of Goddard, said his team is "very confident" about the reported detection of the hydrocarbons, and that they were produced in the rover's ovens. He said it is clear that the chlorine in the compounds is from Mars, but less clear about the carbon.

"We will figure out what's going on here," he said. "We have the instruments and we have the people. And whatever the final conclusions, we will have learned important things about Mars that we can use in the months ahead."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...-science-nasa/

[THE_EGG]

Originally Posted by micropage7

Unclear whether substances are entirely Martian, scientists say

http://images.nationalgeographic.com...54_600x450.jpg

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet.

Speaking at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, Curiosity mission leaders also said that the compound perchlorate—identified previously in polar Mars—appeared to also be present in Gale Crater, the site of Curiosity's exploration.

The possible discovery of organics—or carbon-based compounds bonded to hydrogen, also called hydrocarbons—could have major implications for the mission's search for more complex organic material.

It would not necessarily mean that life exists now or ever existed on Mars, but it makes the possibility of Martian life—especially long ago when the planet was wetter and warmer—somewhat greater, since available carbon is considered to be so important to all known biology.


The announcements came after several weeks of frenzied speculation about a "major discovery" by Curiosity on Mars. But project scientist John Grotzinger said that it remains too early to know whether Martian organics have been definitely discovered or if they're byproducts of contamination brought from Earth.

"When this data first came in, and then was confirmed in a second sample, we did have a hooting and hollering moment," he said.

"The enthusiasm we had was perhaps misunderstood. We're doing science at the pace of science, but news travels at a different speed."

Organics Detected Before on Mars

The organic compounds discovered—different combinations of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine—are the same or similar to chlorinated organics detected in the mid-1970s by the Viking landers.


At the time, the substances were written off as contamination brought from Earth, but now scientists know more about how the compounds could be formed on Mars. The big question remains whether the carbon found in the compounds is of Martian or Earthly origin.

Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of the instrument that may have found the simple organics—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)—said that while the findings were not "definitive," they were significant and would require a great deal of further study.

Mahaffy also said the discovery came as a surprise, since the soil sample involved was hardly a prime target in the organics search. In fact, the soil was scooped primarily to clean out the rover's mobile laboratory and soil-delivery systems.

Called Rocknest, the site is a collection of rocks with rippled sand around them—an environment not considered particularly promising for discovery. The Curiosity team has always thought it had a much better chance of finding the organics in clays and sulfate minerals known to be present at the base of Mount Sharp, located in the Gale Crater, where the rover will head early next year.


The rover has been at Rocknest for a month and has scooped sand and soil five times. It was the first site where virtually all the instruments on Curiosity were used, Grotzinger said, and all of them proved to be working well.

They also worked well in unison—with one instrument giving the surprising signal that the minerals in the soil were not all crystalline, which led to the intensive examination of the non-crystalline portion to see if it contained any organics.

Rover Team "Very Confident"

The simple organics detected by SAM were in the chloromethane family, which contains compounds that are sometimes used to clean electronic equipment. Because it was plausible that Viking could have brought the compounds to Mars as contamination, that conclusion was broadly accepted.

But in 2010, Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center and Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico published an influential paper describing how dichloromethane can be a byproduct of the heating of other organic material in the presence of the compound perchlorate.

They conducted the experiment because NASA's Phoenix mission had discovered large amounts of perchlorate in the northern polar soil of Mars, and it seems plausible that it would exist elsewhere on the planet.

"In terms of the SAM results, there are two important conclusions," said McKay, a scientist on the SAM team.

"The first is confirming the perchlorate story—that it's most likely there and seems to react at high temperatures with organic material to form the dichloromethane and other simple organics."

"The second is that we'll have to either find organics without perchlorates nearby, or find a way to get around that perchlorate wall that keeps us from identifying organics," he said.

Another SAM researcher, Danny Glavin of Goddard, said his team is "very confident" about the reported detection of the hydrocarbons, and that they were produced in the rover's ovens. He said it is clear that the chlorine in the compounds is from Mars, but less clear about the carbon.

"We will figure out what's going on here," he said. "We have the instruments and we have the people. And whatever the final conclusions, we will have learned important things about Mars that we can use in the months ahead."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...-science-nasa/

Interesting, thanks for all the updates man

[Drone]

New pics, no life, no organics just like before:

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Either there's no life at all or they need to look in other places.

[Irony]

Maybe theyre not digging deep enough. They should bring Bagger 288 next trip

[drdeathx]

The Rover has found proof of life on Mars!

[Chevalr1c]

Is that a Comky (or Twinkuter, or whatever)? Assuming that the edible part is a twinkie.

[Irony]

Poor twinkies...got killed by their creator. Now what will the cockroaches eat after the apocalypse?

[evulmunk33]

actually... wouldnt that be a great way to find life?
lay out bait?

why turn over every little rock on the entire planet?
life is very good at spreading and populating sweet spots all by itself, so instead of trying to find life, let life find US!

just leave some pods here and there that offer warmth and water...
eventually, IF there is life, it should populate those pods?

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by evulmunk33

actually... wouldnt that be a great way to find life?
lay out bait?

why turn over every little rock on the entire planet?
life is very good at spreading and populating sweet spots all by itself, so instead of trying to find life, let life find US!

just leave some pods here and there that offer warmth and water...
eventually, IF there is life, it should populate those pods?

only if we knew what life there ate/liked. for example, we cant throw earth food there without earth bacteria growing there - and they want to know the life STARTED on mars.

[evulmunk33]

Originally Posted by Mussels

only if we knew what life there ate/liked. for example, we cant throw earth food there without earth bacteria growing there - and they want to know the life STARTED on mars.

true... we might warm the pods thinking its nice n cozy for them, but they are used to freezing temps on mars and die off... haha

well, providing liquid water is a basic fundamental requirement for any lifeform, isnt it?
so doing that should work... it might then freeze next to the pods, and maybe martians will settle around the pods where the water is frozen and temps are closer to what they are used to... but it should still attract them...

idk, i think it would be worth a shot...

theres a lot of life in the sahara you wouldnt find for months by driving a remote controled robot through it...

[Irony]

Originally Posted by evulmunk33

well, providing liquid water is a basic fundamental requirement for any lifeform, isnt it?

Known life form. For all we know, there could be; and most probably is, life based in other elements than carbon, with totally different requirements for existence. Since mars has no liquid water on the surface, any life that exists there wouldn't need liquid water. Unless they live underground; in which case, we need bagger 288 again lol

[evulmunk33]

Originally Posted by Irony

Known life form. For all we know, there could be; and most probably is, life based in other elements than carbon, with totally different requirements for existence. Since mars has no liquid water on the surface, any life that exists there wouldn't need liquid water. Unless they live underground; in which case, we need bagger 288 again lol

idk... from what i read its unlikely that there is live thats not based on carbon... possible but unlikely...
and life that doesnt need water is even less likely, as life needs a stable neutral medium to create proteins, rna, dna or anything like it...

sure, there might be 23 dimensional light ferries, but cmon...
right now what we are doing is looking for traces of water and carbohydrates, cause based on what we know, or think to know, thats what life needs

all im saying is, instead of looking for it, lay out a bait
if you use an RC car with webcam in your kitchen to hunt for roaches it would probably take you years to spot them, but all it takes to figure out if there are some or not, is put a snickers bar in front of the cam hehe

[jacksonwalt]

great achievement ..well done NASA

[Irony]

Then let us send the last of the twinkies to mars; Let hostess go out with a bang!

[Chevalr1c]

Hostess should have been bought by Mars Foods or Unilever instead of an investment company.

[Drone]

Mars Rover Opportunity: 3 years in 3 minutes

[Drone]

Ok ... new picture (Dec. 7, 2012):



View of a rock outcrop informally named Shaler. Currently, Curiosity rover nearing Yellowknife Bay. Here's a map:

[ALMOSTunseen]

Originally Posted by Drone

Ok ... new picture (Dec. 7, 2012):

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/ne...riosityrov.jpg

View of a rock outcrop informally named Shaler. Currently, Curiosity rover nearing Yellowknife Bay. Here's a map:

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/ne...riosityrov.jpg

I swear I can see water/ice or something reflective in that first picture?

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Originally Posted by ALMOSTunseen

I swear I can see water/ice or something reflective in that first picture?

I believe your right.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by ALMOSTunseen

I swear I can see water/ice or something reflective in that first picture?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

[Mussels]

the smooth patches underneath the ledges look almost reflective. they arent.

[Drone]

New picture Curiosity @ Shaler. Now full panorama:

[Irony]

Thats one of the best shots yet.

[Chevalr1c]

Agreed Irony.