Space.com

The pervading carpet of perchlorate chemicals found on Mars may boost the chances that microbial life exists on the Red Planet — but perchlorates are also perilous to the health of future crews destined to explore that way-off world.

Perchlorates are reactive chemicals first detected in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix lander that plopped down on Mars over five years ago in May 2008.

It is likely both of NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 measured signatures of perchlorates, in the form of chlorinated hydrocarbons. Other U.S. Mars robots — the Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity — detected elemental chlorine. Moreover, orbital measurements taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft show that chlorine is globally distributed.

And more recently, NASA's Curiosity rover found perchlorates within Gale Crater, where it landed in August 2012.

Unexpected results

Finding calcium perchlorate "was one of our most unexpected results," said Peter Smith, the Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"Perchlorate is not a common word in the English language; all of us had to go and look it up," Smith said during Spacefest V, a conference held May 24-27 in Tucson, Ariz. "Perchlorate has become an important component of the soil … and half a percent is a fair amount," he said.

NASA's Viking project found a place in history when in 1976 it became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft successfully on the surface of Mars. The life-detection landers may have measured signatures of perchlorates, in the form of chlorinated hydrocarbons.

Smith said microbes on Earth use perchlorate for an energy source. They actually live off highly oxidized chlorine, and in reducing the chlorine down to chloride, they use the energy in that transaction to power themselves. In fact, when there's too much perchlorate in drinking water, microbes are used to clean it up, he said.

Furthermore, seasonal flow features seen on Mars may be caused by high concentrations of the brines of perchlorate, which has a strong attraction to water and can drastically lower its freezing point, Smith told Space.com.

Devilishly dangerous

The high levels of perchlorate found on Mars would be toxic to humans, Smith said.

"Anybody who is saying they want to go live on the surface of Mars better think about the interaction of perchlorate with the human body," he warned. "At one-half percent, that's a huge amount. Very small amounts are considered toxic. So you'd better have a plan to deal with the poisons on the surface."

Any humans exploring Mars, Smith said, will find it hard to avoid the finest of dust particles. "It'll get into everything…certainly into your habitat."

Undeniably, Martian dust devils laden with perchlorates are sure to be devilishly dangerous.

But Smith also noted that perchlorate is used within the pyrotechnics industry, and ammonium perchlorate is also a component of solid rocket fuel. "So maybe you can mine it as an on-the-spot resource," he said.

Good news, bad news

Perchlorate has made, and continues to make, the search for organics on Mars all but impossible, said astrobiologist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"Its presence is good news for the possibility of life on Mars … but very, very bad news for humans, McKay told Space.com. "Once again, Mars is full of surprises."

"It's bad for astronauts because it is toxic for humans, as it interferes with the thyroid," he said.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is on the prowl, armed with a suite of instruments that can help gauge the habitability of the Red Planet — today, for microbes, and tomorrow, for human explorers.

McKay is one of the co-authors of a new research paper delving into perchlorates on Mars; the work was led by Alfonso Davila of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. That review is slated to appear in the International Journal of Astrobiology and focuses on perchlorate as both a chemical hazard as well as a resource for humans.

Dual implications

The research emphasizes that perchlorate is widespread in Martian soils at concentrations of between 0.5 to 1 percent. There are dual implications of calcium perchlorate on Mars. On one hand, at such concentrations, perchlorate could be an important source of oxygen. But it could also become a critical chemical hazard to astronauts.

In the forthcoming paper, the researchers propose a biochemical approach for the removal of perchlorate from Martian soil that would not only be energetically cheap and environmentally friendly, but could also be used to obtain oxygen both for human consumption and to fuel surface operations. [Search for Life on Mars: A Photo Timeline]

Managing exposure

In many ways, managing calcium perchlorate exposure on Mars is viewed as no different than managing, for example, uranium, lead or general heavy-metal-contaminated areas in modern mines, where dust suppression, dust extraction and regular blood monitoring are employed. Other ideas suggested by the study team include a wash-down spray that can clean suits and equipment of dust deposits.

More proposals are on the table, too. For instance, Mars suits could be kept on the outside of extravehicular activity rovers or habitation modules. The astronauts would climb into their suits through a bulkhead opening, and then the suits would be sealed from within. Thus, Mars crews avoid coming into contact with outside materials.

This approach was originally proposed as a way for astronauts to avoid back contamination when coming in contact with rock and regolith materials. But it might also help in dealing with perchlorates.

Knowledge gaps

There is growing interest in appraising perchlorate as a long-term exposure risk to humans on Mars before the first human sets foot on the Red Planet.

NASA has identified key strategic knowledge gaps that need to be addressed before humans can be sent to Mars. Two key areas are the potential hazards to humans, and the existence of resources that can support human and robotic operations.

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"I'd put it in the category of, this is exactly why we do robotic exploration before sending humans," Doug Archer, a scientist with the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said of the perchlorate research.

Archer said perchlorate's existence on Mars would have posed an even larger problem had it not been discovered.

"But now that we know it's there, I am confident we will be able to design around it," he said. "I have a lot of co-workers here at Johnson Space Center who work in the human exploration side of things, and none of them seem to think perchlorate is a showstopper. So sending robotic explorers as precursors to human exploration is shown to be a very useful strategy."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's new book, "Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration," published by National Geographic. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Mars Water-Ice Clouds Are Key to Odd Thermal Rhythm

June 12, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found that temperatures in the Martian atmosphere regularly rise and fall not just once each day, but twice. 

"We see a temperature maximum in the middle of the day, but we also see a temperature maximum a little after midnight," said Armin Kleinboehl of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is the lead author of a new report on these findings. 

Temperatures swing by as much as 58 degrees Fahrenheit (32 kelvins) in this odd, twice-a-day pattern, as detected by the orbiter's Mars Climate Sounder instrument. 

The new set of Mars Climate Sounder observations sampled a range of times of day and night all over Mars. The observations found that the pattern is dominant globally and year-round. The report is being published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 

Global oscillations of wind, temperature and pressure repeating each day or fraction of a day are called atmospheric tides. In contrast to ocean tides, they are driven by variation in heating between day and night. Earth has atmospheric tides, too, but the ones on Earth produce little temperature difference in the lower atmosphere away from the ground. On Mars, which has only about one percent as much atmosphere as Earth, they dominate short-term temperature variations throughout the atmosphere. 

Tides that go up and down once per day are called "diurnal." The twice-a-day ones are called "semi-diurnal." The semi-diurnal pattern on Mars was first seen in the 1970s, but until now it had been thought to appear just in dusty seasons, related to sunlight warming dust in the atmosphere. 

"We were surprised to find this strong twice-a-day structure in the temperatures of the non-dusty Mars atmosphere," Kleinboehl said. "While the diurnal tide as a dominant temperature response to the day-night cycle of solar heating on Mars has been known for decades, the discovery of a persistent semi-diurnal response even outside of major dust storms was quite unexpected, and caused us to wonder what drove this response." 

He and his four co-authors found the answer in the water-ice clouds of Mars. The Martian atmosphere has water-ice clouds for most of the year. Clouds in the equatorial region between about 6 to 19 miles (10 to 30 kilometers) above the surface of Mars absorb infrared light emitted from the surface during daytime. These are relatively transparent clouds, like thin cirrus clouds on Earth. Still, the absorption by these clouds is enough to heat the middle atmosphere each day. The observed semi-diurnal temperature pattern, with its maximum temperature swings occurring away from the tropics, was also unexpected, but has been replicated in Mars climate models when the radiative effects of water-ice clouds are included. 

"We think of Mars as a cold and dry world with little water, but there is actually more water vapor in the Martian atmosphere than in the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere," Kleinboehl said. "Water-ice clouds have been known to form in regions of cold temperatures, but the feedback of these clouds on the Mars temperature structure had not been appreciated. We know now that we will have to consider the cloud structure if we want to understand the Martian atmosphere. This is comparable to scientific studies concerning Earth's atmosphere, where we have to better understand clouds to estimate their influence on climate." 

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, provided the Mars Climate Sounder instrument and manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. 

Mission Accomplished. NASA confirms that life could have lived on Mars!

Viking Gulliver results demand review.

http://www.geeksonmars.com/drlevinsresearchdocumentation.html/

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Nears Turning Point

Now Let's Go Exploring !

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Drilled Hole and ChemCam Marks at ' Cumberland'

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was used to check the composition of gray tailings from the hole in rock target "Cumberland" that the rover drilled on May 19, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
› Full image and caption

Mars Science Laboratory Mission Status Report 

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission is approaching its biggest turning point since landing its rover, Curiosity, inside Mars' Gale Crater last summer. 

Curiosity is finishing investigations in an area smaller than a football field where it has been working for six months, and it will soon shift to a distance-driving mode headed for an area about 5 miles (8 kilometers) away, at the base Mount Sharp. 

In May, the mission drilled a second rock target for sample material and delivered portions of that rock powder into laboratory instruments in one week, about one-fourth as much time as needed at the first drilled rock. 

"We're hitting full stride," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We needed a more deliberate pace for all the first-time activities by Curiosity since landing, but we won't have many more of those." 

No additional rock drilling or soil scooping is planned in the "Glenelg" area that Curiosity entered last fall as the mission's first destination after landing. To reach Glenelg, the rover drove east about a third of a mile (500 meters) from the landing site. To reach the next destination, Mount Sharp, Curiosity will drive toward the southwest for many months. 

"We don't know when we'll get to Mount Sharp," Erickson said. "This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn't mean we're not going to investigate interesting features along the way." 

Images of Mount Sharp taken from orbit and images Curiosity has taken from a distance reveal many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved. 

While completing major first-time activities since landing, the mission has also already accomplished its main science objective. Analysis of rock powder from the first drilled rock target, "John Klein," provided evidence that an ancient environment in Gale Crater had favorable conditions for microbial life: the essential elemental ingredients, energy and ponded water that was neither too acidic nor too briny. 

The rover team chose a similar rock, "Cumberland," as the second drilling target to provide a check for the findings at John Klein. Scientists are analyzing laboratory-instrument results from portions of the Cumberland sample. One new capability being used is to drive away while still holding rock powder in Curiosity's sample-handling device to supply additional material to instruments later if desired by the science team. 

For the drill campaign at Cumberland, steps that each took a day or more at John Klein could be combined into a single day's sequence of commands. "We used the experience and lessons from our first drilling campaign, as well as new cached sample capabilities, to do the second drill campaign far more efficiently," said sampling activity lead Joe Melko of JPL. "In addition, we increased use of the rover's autonomous self-protection. This allowed more activities to be strung together before the ground team had to check in on the rover." 

The science team has chosen three targets for brief observations before Curiosity leaves the Glenelg area: the boundary between bedrock areas of mudstone and sandstone, a layered outcrop called "Shaler" and a pitted outcrop called "Point Lake." 

JPL's Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for Curiosity, said "Shaler might be a river deposit. Point Lake might be volcanic or sedimentary. A closer look at them could give us better understanding of how the rocks we sampled with the drill fit into the history of how the environment changed." 

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more about the mission, visit:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl . 

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity andhttp://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Curiosity tasked with hunting for elusive Mars organics

BY STEPHEN CLARK

SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: 22 May 2013

Grotzinger and Vasavada have directed their science team to develop a systematic search for organic molecules, driving the rover to locations thought to best sustain carbon.

Back in action after a month out of contact with Earth, NASA's Curiosity rover is renewing its quest to excavate a definitive signal of organic molecules - the building blocks of life - from the red planet's regolith and bedrock after a first taste of Martian soil turned up inconclusive results.

Scientists say there should be plenty of organic molecules on Mars. The red planet has been pummeled by asteroids and comets since it formed, delivering organics to the surface over billions of years.

So far, Curiosity has not encountered the levels of organic material scientists expected to find, but the mission has a long way to go before reaching a verdict on the presence of organics at the rover's Gale Crater exploration site.

The six-wheeled robot's drill bored into a slab of Martian mudstone Sunday to collect the mission's second sample of rock powder. The rover's drill and scoop, mounted on the craft's robotic arm, will deliver the sample to Curiosity's analytical instruments to scrutinize the material for the signature of life-forming organic molecules.

The drill site is at a rock named "Cumberland" about 9 feet away from the location where Curiosity extracted the mission's first powder rock sample from a target called "John Klein."

The drill campaign at Cumberland is the rover's first major scientific research activity since it renewed full communications with Earth in early May. Mars was on the opposite side of the sun from Earth for most of April, and managers instituted a moratorium on commands to the rover in case the sun disrupted or corrupted signals passing between Curiosity and ground antennas.

Scientists will use the Cumberland sample to confirm results from an analysis of Curiosity's John Klein sample collected in February, which showed the rover is in a region that was once habitable for life on ancient Mars.

The second drill sample will help ensure the findings from the John Klein analysis were not affected by contamination from other types of Martian soil.

"The idea is to follow up on all these discoveries we've been making at this John Klein drill site," said Ashwin Vasavada, the rover's deputy project scientist, in an interview before the May 19 drill at Cumberland. "The team has done a really extensive analysis of the first powder that was acquired during the drilling, but to confirm some of those results and maybe slightly tweak some of experiments for even better analysis, we'd like to do a second drill hole somewhere around the current drill site."

Both drill locations are in a shallow depression named Yellowknife Bay, where Curiosity has explored rocks and soil since autumn. Scientists believe the Yellowknife Bay site is at the end of an ancient river system.

Despite the promising discovery that Yellowknife Bay was once habitable for microbial life, studies of drill and scoop samples gathered by Curiosity have been inconclusive on the hunt for organic compounds - the chemical building blocks necessary for the formation of life.

Vasavada said he expects Curiosity will spend a few more weeks at Yellowknife Bay, then drive toward Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high peak nearby that might offer a more definitive measurement for Curiosity's instruments sensitive to organic molecules.

Since landing on Mars in August, Curiosity has driven about a half-mile across rocks and dusty soil to the Yellowknife Bay region. The rover's on-board instruments tasted powder from mudstone and found an array of elements essential for life.

Carbon? Check. Hydrogen? Absolutely. Oxygen? Yep. Nitrogen? Sure. Phosphorus? You bet. Sulfur? Plenty.

"You add it all up, and the presence of minerals in various states of oxidation would provide a source of energy for primitive biology," said John Grotzinger, Curiosity's lead scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

That finding is enough for Curiosity's mission to be considered a success, Grotzinger told a NASA advisory panel in April.

"This meets our mission success criteria, and we're having a good time," he said.

But in its first thorough check of Martian soil, Curiosity's SAM sample-analyzing instrument, designed to sniff out the building blocks of life, did not detect the kind of complex organic molecules many scientists hoped to find.

"So far, we detected some carbon in the rocks and some very simple carbon-containing molecules, but nothing you would call the organics that people were excited to find," Vasavada said. "That's kind of a mystery because we expect there to be carbon or even organics on Mars delivered naturally. We know that, for example, asteroids and comets have organic molecules in them. They form naturally in space and would be delivered to Mars."

Grotzinger and Vasavada have directed their science team to develop a systematic search for organic molecules, driving the rover to locations thought to best sustain carbon. Curiosity is not equipped to find extant life, but there is much to learn about the red planet's ability to preserve organics and how to uncover them.

It won't be easy, Grotzinger said.

"I just think we'd be nuts to go around promising people that we have even a good chance of finding organics," Grotzinger said in April. "On the other hand, I think, as a mission, we have to undertake this search systematically, so that if we don't find anything, we can do a proper post-mortem and say here's what we tried, here's what we discovered, and here's our best attempt to explain why we might have failed."

And if scientists are lucky, the rover could make a discovery, he said.

Curiosity is first continuing the work at Yellowknife Bay.

Managers selected the Cumberland drill site because it is near the location Curiosity retrieved the mission's first powder sample.

But one difference is the Cumberland rock is covered with tiny spherical concretions, which look similar to 'blueberries' discovered by NASA's Opportunity rover on the other side of Mars.

Opportunity found the blueberry concretions were made of hematite - a strongly oxidized iron-bearing mineral - left behind as water saturated Martian bedrock in an earlier wetter period in the red planet's history.

While Curiosity's finding looks similar to Opportunity's blueberries, scientists say the granules are made of different material. One possibility is the concretions are made of magnetite - an iron-based mineral with less oxidation than hematite - and formed in an aquatic environment in a similar way to the hematite blueberries.

Curiosity's chemical and mineralogical instrument indicated the rocks near the rover are rich in magnetite, and trailings from both of the rover's drill holes are gray, suggesting the material is less oxidized than the reddish rock present at Opportunity's landing site.

Scientists will have to wait several weeks to learn whether Curiosity's instruments find organic molecules in the Cumberland concretions. Their wait is even longer before Curiosity searches for organics amid the layers of clay on Mount Sharp, which researchers suspect holds the mission's best shot for finding more complex organic molecules than found so far.

Curiosity will start driving toward Mount Sharp as soon as June, making brief stops to investigate rocks and other interesting research targets before beginning the climb up the flank of the central peak of Gale Crater, the rover's landing site.

When NASA selected the Curiosity landing site, the prevailing theory was Mount Sharp was formed in a long-gone lake. But new research from scientists at Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology suggests Mount Sharp was assembled over eons by silt lifted into the Martian sky by winds.

The theory of wind formation for Mount Sharp would throw into doubt whether Mount Sharp is the best spot on Mars for a rover to seek evidence for past life, according to Kevin Lewis, a Princeton associate research scholar in geosciences and a participating scientist on the Curiosity rover mission.

This image from Curiosity's navigation camera captured a view of the rover's robot arm and turret, which holds the drill and other instrumentation. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Based on researchers' understanding of how organics are transported through the solar system, Vasavada said there should be many more carbon compounds than what Curiosity has discovered to date.

Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument package, said ancient stream systems and layered clays like Yellowknife Bay and Mount Sharp are typically good preservers of organics on Earth.

"We do believe that there should be a background rain of abiotic carbon that comes in from the cosmos," Grotzinger said. "We would expect, at some point, to actually find, and be able to measure, something more complicated than a single chlorine chlorohydrocarbon - just a one-carbon atom structure."

Although Curiosity's first tastes of soil produced no conclusive results for organics, officials are not close to giving up. But scientists are questioning why the rover did not detect carbon where it was expected.

"Are we even able to detect that background amount we expect to be there, apart from life or anything else? If not, why not? The team has been discussing various ways that organics are destroyed on Mars," Vasavada said. "One possibility is that this particular site we're at wasn't conducive to preserving organics over time. There could be things like UV light, natural high-energy radiation, or different chemical oxidants, all of which could destroy the evidence before we get a chance to detect it with our instruments.

"That's where we're at with this particular site, not having seen much of a signal," Vasavada said. "Now the job is to take out the pencil and paper and figure out what we would have expected to see even from natural sources. Is it telling us this is not a place that would preserve that kind of evidence for us? That would point us to look elsewhere."

Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars program, said the rover's results will not be the final ruling on whether life or organic material existed in the red planet's distant past.

"Even if you understand everything and you don't find any evidence, that doesn't mean there wasn't something going on when those rocks were laid down," Meyer said May 6 in a public discussion at the Humans 2 Mars Summit in Washington.

According to Grotzinger, the rover's science team is thinking of ways "up the bar" and explore for carbon with an eye toward informing upcoming missions of where organics tend to reside on Mars.

"We're learning about how to find areas and samples that would preserve that kind of evidence," Vasavada said. "That helps not only us, but a sample return mission."

NASA's next Mars rover, due for launch in 2020, will likely carry equipment to collect and store soil samples for retrieval by a future spacecraft for return to Earth.

"I see this as something important for us to do because this isn't going to be easy," Grotzinger said. "Somewhere there should be something preserved. I think as we go to Mount Sharp, we'll be able to push more buttons there, and not only explore different habitability scenarios but also explore options that may have preserved organic carbon differently."

Billion-year-old underground water could hold clues to early life on Earth, Mars

BY SHERYL UBELACKER, THE CANADIAN PRESS MAY 15, 2013

TORONTO - Deep underground within the Canadian Shield, scientists are probing for life — yes, life.

Their laboratory is found at the bottom of mine shafts in Timmins, Ont., where pockets of water trapped inside crystalline granite rock have existed for at least a billion years, and may be as ancient as the geology itself — 2.7 billion years old.

That chemical-rich water is seeping, at times even pouring, out of mine bore holes and naturally occurring fissures in the rock 2.4 kilometres below the surface. The water has been captured in what are known as "fractures" within the rocks.

And scientists are keen to find out what that water contains.

"These are the oldest waters that have ever been identified," said Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a geoscientist at the University of Toronto who is part of a research team that will be looking for life forms in samples of water from the site.

"The Canadian Shield is some of the oldest rocks on Earth. These are billions of years old," she said Wednesday. "And what we've shown is despite that, these fractures are still releasing water that are full of energy that could support life.

"We don't know yet if there's life in this, but what we've been able to show is it is habitable, meaning (having the) potential to support life because of the energy that's there."

It's not the kind of oxygen-fuelled life forms found on our planet's surface, but microbes that have evolved in an environment devoid of sunlight and photosynthesis, said Sherwood Lollar, co-author of a research paper published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Such life has already been found at 2.7 kilometres underground at a gold mine in South Africa, though the rocks there date in the tens of millions of years, not billions as the Canadian site does.

Many species have also been discovered in and around hydrothermal vents in the inky darkness at the bottom of oceans, where no sunlight ever penetrates. Water from these vents, which is rich in dissolved minerals that would be toxic to surface dwellers, teem with these "chemoautotrophic" bacteria.

The chemical makeup of the water at the Timmins mine is similar to that produced at hydrothermal vents, said Sherwood Lollar. "It's loaded with dissolved chemistry that actually can support life."

The water's chemistry could provide a snapshot of Earth's atmosphere billions of years ago, when it was transitioning to oxygen, as well as helping scientists better understand the nature of "deep life."

"It's really only in my lifetime that we've begun to understand that the subsurface of our planet isn't just a sterile wasteland. When I was in first-year university we still thought that," she said.

"We're understanding that there is deep life, that it's run by a different kind of energy, often. What we're really interested in now is finding out more about the nature of that kind of life."

If researchers do turn up life forms in the Canadian water samples, the big question is will they be similar or different from those in South Africa or the ocean's hydrothermal vents?

"It will help us understand how much of our planet is actually habitable. Are we really just a thin film of life on the surface? Or how prevalent is this subsurface life and what percentage of the world's overall biomass is down there?"

The answer won't be known for at least a year, Sherwood Lollar said.

What's also exciting, she said, is what discovering life deep underground could mean for planets beyond Earth, specifically Mars.

"Much of the Mars crust is similar to our ancient (Canadian Shield). It's also billions of years old crystalline rock," with a similar geography to the Timmins site, she said.

That suggests that rocks on Mars could also contain water — and maybe even some kind of life.

"It's reasonable to think that same process could be going on today in the depths of Mars."

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/fp/yourmoney/Billionyearold+underground+water+could+hold+clues+early/8390915/story.html#ixzz2TVLxTZ8h

Any attorneys out there that think they can win this intellectual property rights case?

November 16, 2010

The authors compared space colonists with the first European colonists of North America, who sailed to America not planning to return to Europe with syphilis, although many did, killing millions.

 We are fairly certain today that Viking found evidence of life on Mars. And most scientists believe that life on Mars and life on Earth probably came from the same third source because both planets are too young for chemical evolution to run its almost infinite course. When we find proof of life on Mars we have only proven life can travel among nearby planets, unless life on Mars is different from life on Earth. And that cosmic consequence requires the chirality and amino acid examination. You can google why.

 Ray Bradbury called Star Trek a Wagon Train episode in space. Need we say more?

Back From Far Side of the Sun, Curiosity Rover Gets Ready to Resume Science

A beautiful mosaic stitched together from Curiosity images from before the Mars conjunction, showing the rover’s arm and Mount Sharp in the distance. Click for full size. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

After a long period of silence, NASA has reestablished its link with the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers and is getting ready to resume science operations on Mars.

The Red Planet has been hidden behind the sun for most of the month of April, meaning that signals sent from here to there could get interrupted or scrambled. The Mars flotilla — which includes the two rovers, two orbiting satellites, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft – have been on their own for this duration. The rovers have been banned from driving and have mostly been taking routine measurements. Curiosity, for instance, has monitored radiation and atmospheric changes from its position at Gale Crater.

But now the wait is over. Both rovers are reporting healthy status. The smaller and older Opportunity rover, which has been on Mars since 2004, is out of standby mode and executing new instructions from NASA. The first thing in store for Curiosity is a software update.

“From time to time on your laptop, you need to update your operating system,” said geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, the rover’s project scientist. “Every couple of months we also upload a new version of Curiosity’s flight software and, when it’s convenient, we transition to it.”

The newest 225-million-kilometer software patch will improve the rover’s efficiency. Certain operations, like making sure the robot’s ChemCam wasn’t pointed at the sun, previously required a human at mission control to be in the loop. Such processes are now automated.

The software update won’t go as quickly as getting the newest version of an iPhone app. It will take the rest of the week to make sure everything is properly installed. After that, Curiosity will be ready to resume doing science.

Grotzinger said the science team is looking to document their drill site, perhaps getting some close-up photos and X-ray measurements inside the drill hole. After that, they will probably look to bore another hole about one or two meters from the original drill site to see if there are any mineral variations in the rock.

“Then we’ll make sure there aren’t some last minute things to wrap up and begin our plan to head to Mount Sharp,” said Grotzinger, referring to the 5.5-km-high peak at the center of Gale Crater that is Curiosity’s main target.

The rover hopes to investigate the mountain in order to better understand its watery history and whether or not it could have definitively supported life in the past. Curiosity moves slowly, about the same speed as a crawling baby, so it will take a while to reach Mount Sharp, likely after a few stops at areas of geologic interest. Grotzinger is optimistic that the long trek will begin this summer.

Angry, powerful Sun storm 

aims at Curiosity Rover on Mars

Totally out of communications with the Curiosity rover and its over-head satellite network, NASA and its team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory are hoping that Curiosity is still alive when the angry Sun moves from between Mars and Earth.

Last week the giant sun storm AR1726 aimed its delta-class magnetic field, capable of X class solar flares, at Earth with little damage sustained. No X class flares were generated.

The Earth is swaddled in a powerful and resilient electromagnetic shield that is all that saves the planet’s atmosphere from disintegration when the Sun’s most powerful X-class solar flares deliver billions of tons of high energy particles at millions of miles an hour.

The delta class. X flare-threat has now shifted to the far side of the sun. Earth is safe, but, according to the experts both Mercury and Mars are in the line of fire from incredible radiation levels. And these levels are far greater than the storm that caused JPL to shut down Curiosity on March 5.

Curiosity's handlers put the rover on standby after the sun unleashed a medium-strength flare in the Red Planet's direction on March 5. It's the second recent shutdown for Curiosity, which had just come out of protective "safe mode" on March 2 as engineers work through an issue with its primary computer system.

"Storm's a-comin'! There's a solar storm heading for Mars. I'm going back to sleep to weather it out," NASA officials wrote on behalf of the rover via Curiosity's Twitter feed on March 6.

Mars has no atmosphere to speak of and no lead core to generate a magnetic field, so it can be peeled like a fruit by solar blasts in the X range, and it sometimes is.

It will be a week or so before the NASA rover ventriloquists can hear the faint beep from the red planet that tells them MSL Curiosity lander has endured its greatest threat.

Where life could have lived on Mars,

Today it is “cold, oxidizing and acidic.” Curiosity vulcanologist says

ST. CATHARINES - In eight months since NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory landed on Mars, there’s more tantalizing evidence the planet could once support life.

That’s a conclusion from Mariek Schmidt, a Brock University professor and scientist with the laboratory and its rover Curiosity.

Schmidt spoke at a Wednesday lecture as part of a Brock math and science department distinguished speaker series.

“Life was possible at one time on Mars,” the vulcanologist and assistance professor of earth sciences told the group of about 100.

“We do not have life, but we found an environment that could have sustained life at one time — and that’s very exciting.”

The Curiosity Rover landed in the 150-km. wide Gale Crater that also contains a massive peak called Mt. Sharp.

Schmidt spent two months working on the project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

She’s among only three Canadian scientists working on the $2.5 billion international mission. Schmidt has since returned to Brock, where she’s analyzing data and helping develop plans for the rover.

Among recent discoveries by the nuclear-powered Curiosity is evidence of water affecting rocks and surfaces, and ponded water.

There may have even been potential energy sources for former life.

In an exploration area called Yellowknife Bay, “collectively we found ... very good evidence for an ancient habitable environment,” she said.

“The minerology indicates sustained interaction with liquid water, that was not too acidic, not too alkaline and relatively low (salt content).”

Key ingredients for life, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, nitrogen were also uncovered. Other minerals had different levels of oxidization, which could have been a microorganism energy source.

She said it’s clear Mars was once much more active, with volcanoes and lava rocks.

In her speech, Schmidt said the mission also has a human component in gathering information on what it would be like to visit the planet.

Curiosity has learned Mars is a “cold, dry, dusty place, and wind dominates,” she said. “It’s an oxidizing and acidic place.”

Its sensors have recorded temperatures varying from zero celcius to -90°C. “It’s a pretty extreme difference between day and night,” she said.

NASA scientists also examined the radiation visitors might be exposed to.

“The other thing that came out of (measurements) is ‘yes we could visit Mars and we wouldn’t (soon) die of cancer,’” she said, adding she believes people will physically explore the planet in her lifetime.

Meanwhile, the lander is now drilling in the area. It will eventually move toward Mt. Sharp to examine dunes and lower regions there.

The mission is deemed a success if it lasts two years, and the nuclear-powered lander could theoretically be powered for decades.

Asked for whether she thought life exists on Mars now, Schmidt said it’s simply not known.

“It is possible,” she said. “(And) we can’t say for sure but ... it was possible in the past.”

don.fraser@sunmedia.ca

NASA puts Mars rover Curiosity on standby after solar flare

The rover team views the shutdown as merely a precaution, as Curiosity was designed to withstand such solar outbursts.

By

Mike Wall, SPACE.com

Thu, Mar 07 2013 at 10:27 AM

NASA's Curiosity rover has powered down to wait out a Mars-bound solar blast, complicating efforts to bring the 1-ton robot back from a computer glitch.

Curiosity's handlers put the rover on standby after the sun unleashed a medium-strength flare in the Red Planet's direction on March 5. It's the second recent shutdown for Curiosity, which had just come out of protective "safe mode" on March 2 as engineers work through an issue with its primary computer system.

"Storm's a-comin'! There's a solar storm heading for Mars. I'm going back to sleep to weather it out," NASA officials wrote on behalf of the rover via Curiosity's Twitter feed on March 6.

The rover team views the shutdown as merely a precaution, as Curiosity was designed to withstand such solar outbursts, the Associated Press reported. But the move could delay the rover's return to science operations, which had been anticipated as early as this weekend.

Curiosity landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater last August to determine if the area has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The robot had been operating pretty much flawlessly on the Red Planet until Feb. 27, when it failed to send recorded data home to Earth and didn't shift into its daily sleep mode as planned.

[Curiosity Rover's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

The mission team determined that a glitch had affected the flash memory on Curiosity's main, or A-side, computer system. So engineers swapped the rover over to its backup (B-side) computer, which spurred Curiosity to go into safe mode on Feb. 28.

Since then, the robot's handlers have been working to configure the B-side computer for surface operations and fix the problem with the A-side, which they think may have been caused by a fast-moving charged particle known as a cosmic ray.

Curiosity has been on the road to recovery. The rover came out of safe mode on Saturday and began using its high-gain antenna again a day later. Mission officials have expressed confidence that engineers will fix or troubleshoot the glitch soon, saying Curiosity may resume science operations as early as this weekend if all continues to go well.

The solar flare may now push that timeline back a bit, however.

NASA officials do not expect Tuesday's solar flare to seriously affect any of the agency's other robotic Mars explorers, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or Opportunity rover, the Associated Press reported.

The flare was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), which blasted a huge cloud of solar plasma toward the Red Planet. CMEs that slam into Earth inject large amounts of energy into our planet's magnetic field, spawning potentially devastating geomagnetic storms that can disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and power grids for days.

But CMEs don't have a similar impact on Mars, which lacks a global magnetic field, scientists say.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

Collision Course? A Comet Heads for Mars

March 27, 2013: Over the years, the spacefaring nations of Earth have sent dozens of probes and rovers to explore Mars.  Today there are three active satellites circling the red planet while two rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity, wheel across the red sands below.  Mars is dry, barren, and apparently lifeless.

Soon, those assets could find themselves exploring a very different kind of world.

"There is a small but non-negligible chance that Comet 2013 A1 will strike Mars next year in October of 2014," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at JPL.  "Current solutions put the odds of impact at 1 in 2000."

In a new ScienceCast video, experts discuss what might happen if Comet 2013 A1 hits Mars. Play it

The nucleus of the comet is probably 1 to 3 km in diameter, and it is coming in fast, around 56 km/s (125,000 mph). "It if does hit Mars, it would deliver as much energy as 35 million megatons of TNT," estimates Yeomans.

For comparison, the asteroid strike that ended the dinosaurs on Earth 65 million years ago was about three times as powerful, 100 million megatons. Another point of comparison is the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February of 2013, damaging buildings and knocking people down. The Mars comet is packing 80 million times more energy than that relatively puny asteroid.

An impact wouldn't necessarily mean the end of NASA's Mars program. But it would transform the program-- along with Mars itself.

"I think of it as a giant climate experiment," says Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters.  "An impact would loft a lot of stuff into the Martian atmosphere--dust, sand, water and other debris. The result could be a warmer, wetter Mars than we're accustomed to today."

Meyer worries that solar-powered Opportunity might have a hard time surviving if the atmosphere became opaque.  Nuclear-powered Curiosity, though, would carry on just fine.  He also notes that Mars orbiters might have trouble seeing the surface, for a while at least, until the debris begins to clear.

Opportunity might have trouble observing the aftermath of a comet impact if dust in the air cuts sunlight to the rover's solar panels. More

A direct impact remains unlikely.  Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program stresses that a 1 in 2000 chance of impact means there's a 1999 in 2000 chance of no impact.  "A near-miss is far more likely," he points out.

Even a near miss is a potentially big event.  The latest orbit solutions put the comet somewhere within 300,000 km of the red planet at closest approach.  That means Mars could find itself inside the comet's gassy, dusty atmosphere or "coma."  Visually, the comet would reach 0th magnitude, that is, a few times brighter than a 1st magnitude star, as seen from the Red Planet.

"Cameras on ALL of NASA's spacecraft currently operating at Mars should be able to take photographs of Comet 2013 A1," says Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and Mars imaging specialist at Arizona State University. "The issue with Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be the ability to point them in the right direction; they are used to looking down, not up. Mission designers will have to figure out if that is possible."

"The issue with the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers will be power for imaging at night," he continues. "Opportunity is solar powered and so would need to dip into reserve battery power to operate the cameras at night. Whether or not we will be able to do this will depend on how much power the rover is getting from dusty solar panels in the daytime. On the other hand, Curiosity is nuclear powered, so it could have better odds at night-time imaging."

Researchers will be keenly interested to see how the comet's atmosphere interacts with the atmosphere of Mars.  For one thing, there could be a meteor shower. "Analyzing the spectrum of disintegrating meteors could tell us something interesting about the chemistry of the upper atmosphere," notes Meyer.

Click to view an interactive 3D orbit of Comet 2013 A1.

Another possibility is Martian auroras.  Unlike Earth, which has a global magnetic field that wraps around our entire planet, Mars is only magnetized in patches.  Here and there, magnetic umbrellas sprout out of the ground, creating a crazy-quilt of magnetic poles concentrated mainly in the southern hemisphere.  Ionized gases hitting the top of the Martian atmosphere could spark auroras in the canopies of the magnetic umbrellas.

Even before the comet flyby was known, NASA had already decided to send a spacecraft to Mars to study the dynamics of the Martian atmosphere.  If the probe, named MAVEN (short for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution"), is launched on time in November 2013, it would reach Mars just a few weeks before the comet in 2014.

However, notes MAVEN's principal investigator Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, the spacecraft won't be ready to observe the comet when it reaches Mars.  "It takes a while to get into our science mapping orbit, deploy the booms, turn on and test the science instruments--and so on," he explains. "MAVEN won't be fully operational until perhaps two weeks after the comet passes.  There are some effects that I would expect to linger for a relatively long period--especially if the comet hits Mars--and we will be able to observe those changes."

Astronomers around the world are monitoring 2013 A1.  Every day, new data arrive to refine the comet's orbit.  As the error bars shrink, Yeomans expects a direct hit to be ruled out.  "The odds favor a flyby, not a collision," he says. 

Either way, this is going to be good. Stay tuned for updates as the comet approaches.

Mission status report: A side computer functioning

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has resumed science investigations after recovery from a computer glitch that prompted the engineers to switch the rover to a redundant main computer on Feb. 28.

The rover has been monitoring the weather since March 21 and delivered a new portion of powdered-rock sample for laboratory analysis on March 23, among other activities.

"We are back to full science operations," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The powder delivered on Saturday came from the rover's first full drilling into a rock to collect a sample. The new portion went into the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument inside the rover, which began analyzing this material and had previously analyzed other portions from the same drilling. SAM can analyze samples in several different ways, so multiple portions from the same drilling are useful.

The Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) is recording weather variables. The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is checking the natural radiation environment at the rover's location inside Gale Crater.

Like many spacecraft, Curiosity carries a pair of main computers, redundant to each other, to have a backup available if one fails. Each of the computers, A-side and B-side, also has other redundant subsystems linked to just that computer. Curiosity is now operating on its B-side, as it did during part of the flight from Earth to Mars. The A-side was most recently used starting a few weeks before landing and continuing until Feb. 28, when engineers commanded a switch to the B-side in response to a memory glitch on the A-side. The A-side now is available as a backup if needed.

One aspect of ramping-up activities after switching to the B-side computer has been to check the six engineering cameras that are hard-linked to that computer. The rover's science instruments, including five science cameras, can each be operated by either the A-side or B-side computer, whichever is active. However, each of Curiosity's 12 engineering cameras is linked to just one of the computers. The engineering cameras are the Navigation Camera (Navcam), the Front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) and Rear Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Rear Hazcam). Each of those three named cameras has four cameras on it: two stereo pairs of cameras, with one pair linked to each computer. Only the pairs linked to the active computer can be used, and the A-side computer was active from before landing, in August, until Feb. 28.

"This was the first use of the B-side engineering cameras since April 2012, on the way to Mars," said JPL's Justin Maki, team lead for these cameras. "Now we've used them on Mars for the first time, and they've all checked out OK."

Engineers quickly diagnosed a software issue that prompted Curiosity to put itself into a precautionary standby "safe mode" on March 16, and they know how to prevent it from happening again. The rover stayed on its B-side while it was in safe mode and subsequently as science activities resumed.

Upcoming activities include preparations for a moratorium on transmitting commands to Curiosity from April 4 to May 1, while Mars will be passing nearly directly behind the sun from Earth's perspective. The moratorium is a precaution against possible interference by the sun corrupting a command sent to the rover.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The definitive interview with John Grotz on the status of Curiosity

Where Life Could Thrive: Interview With John Grotzinger
by Nola Taylor Reddfor Astrobiology Magazine
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Mar 25, 2013

On Tuesday March 13, NASA's Curiosity science team announced that the Martian rover had found the first confirmed site other than Earth where conditions were right to have once hosted ancient life, if it ever evolved on the red planet.

John Grotzinger, project scientist for the Curiosity mission, offered his perspective on the rover's journey of exploration and the historic find at the John Klein drill site.

A lot has happened in the seven months since Curiosity has landed. How does it feel to have accomplished so much in that time?

It feels terrific. I think our team has a really strong feeling of accomplishment. Everybody's worked really hard. We had a year of preparation for surface operations. Before we landed, we were able to get the orbiter data and do advanced mapping of the landing ellipse, that no matter where we landed, we would have an initial guess about where we might want to go. All of that preparation paid off.

We always felt that the placement of the landing ellipse would put us in a good position to have potential for discovery. We never really felt that we had to race out of there right away. Between the particular place that we ended up landing and having done all that preparation, we were really in a good position to have a rapid path of discovery.

However, you don't know what you've got until you see your cards, and so until that, we've been nervously waiting for the drilling to happen to see what we would get into CheMin and SAM. It worked out just about as well as we could have hoped for.

You mentioned that on reaching the site John Klein, the discoveries that were made were not serendipitous.

They were not accidental or luck, but they were very deliberate in terms of actually getting to that point.

Yes, finding the right geological place was something that we did very deliberately, working with the geological model that we began to develop before we landed, that we added to after we landed with the discovery of the ancient pebble bed. All the signs were directing us towards this area.

Now, what was then serendipitous was the discovery of the clays and the sulfates. We would have been happy with either one of them, let alone both of them occurring simultaneously.

Would you have come up with different conclusions if you had found only one rather than both?

It's possible and it depends. The clays point to a neutral pH environment. The calcium sulfate could be consistent with a variety of pH's, but I think together it really adds up to a strong story for the habitable environment.

This is the first definitive habitable environment outside of Earth. Would you like to speak to that?

It feels pretty great. That's always been the goal. Before Mars, we've been getting closer and closer all the time, and we've known that the very ancient [terrain] is the place to go to. We've done a decade of mapping from orbit and we've tried places on the ground with previous rovers. All of this has been adding up to an increasingly positive situation that we've now been finally able to demonstrate.

In principle, this is an ideal kind of habitable environment for microbes, so we feel really good about that. It's the kind of thing that you look at and you realize as a team that we really have been able to do something pretty profound. We benefited from all those that came before us. We had state-of-the-art equipment and we had an incredibly capable rover with what seemed to be a highly improbable landing configuration. So we took risks where we needed to take risks and they were always what we viewed to be relatively small risks, but being aggressive in that kind of exploration has paid off and we feel really, really good about it.

I think it's kind of obvious how the orbiters have helped you with the mapping and pegging sites. How did previous rovers and the work that they've done help to lay the foundation?

Opportunity showed us the vastness over which water can be active but it also showed us that chemically and mineralogically, just water alone isn't enough. The environment at Meridani, which turned out to be a subsurface groundwater environment, was probably very acidic. It was probably extremely salty and we don't see the chemical energy that we have at John Klein. So it provided a calibration point for the orbiters that were trying to map the sulfates. Because we had an instrument on Opportunity that was able to confirm the presence of sulfate minerals, we were then able to do a cross-correlation between the surface and the orbiter. Thus the orbiter was able to do a better job of mapping.

Then with Spirit, at Gusev Crater, it took years and years and years of exploration to finally find something that was really good. When it did, it was very encouraging exploring the much more ancient part of Mars. We saw what looked like a hot spring deposit there that we weren't able to do the full chemical characterization on, lacking instruments like CheMin and SAM, but we saw that water was able to exist in a different, more promising type of environment than it had existed in Meridiani. Now here at Gale, we're exploring something that looks like an ancient river and lake type environment.

Could you kind of touch on why John Klein has good preservation potential for organics?

When you see the reducing compounds and the green color, it's an indication that, all other things being equal, you've got a better environment for preservation of organics than one in which all the minerals are red, which means they're more oxidized. If you introduce oxygen, at least in a chemical way, it can break down organics. That's why I said that really the important thing, the learning point for us going forward as a community, including the media, is that there's three parts to this preservation problem. It's not just one.

Initially, the issue is that of concentration of organic matter in the primary environment. The second thing is what's going on chemically during the conversion of sediment to rock -- what we call diagenesis -- where lithification occurs. That's where the color is relevant. If you have less oxygen available, then you have a better chance to preserve organics, but that presumes that there is something there to preserve to begin with. Then the third part is that, even if all that goes right and organics had accumulated and you also have the right colors, chemicals, and minerals, if you then expose the surface to radiation for a couple of billion years it can break those organics down.

All three of these things are important for preservation. The good thing for us is that, looking at that grayer color and finding those clay minerals and seeing iron in a not-so-oxidized state helps, but it's not the only thing.

One of the comments made during the press briefing was that, since there were four potential landing sites, there was a 75% chance that the wrong one was selected.

To be clear, the others could have also paid off. There were four final landing spots and we picked one that we thought was best for our payload. But with that we took a little bit of a risk, because within the landing site there was no evidence for sulfates or clays from orbit, which we considered to be potential leading indicators of not just water but also potentially the kinds of habitable environments that we would like to find. If we wouldn't have gone to Gale, that's not to say we wouldn't have found those things elsewhere. All four of the landing sites were known to contain clays at least in one place that would have been accessible to the rover.

Gale just seemed to offer the greatest diversity weighed against the risk that there was no signal in the landing ellipse that there were clays or sulfates there. We were willing to accept that risk. Gale Crater is full of rock, but the reason you don't see a signal from orbit is because it's got a thin coating of dust. That turns out to be a real problem for the spectrometers that look from orbit. Even a few microns-thick layer of dust is enough to prevent the signal from being seen.

So there could be other sites that have clays then that would be hidden from orbit.

Right, yep.

In preparation for solar conjunction, when the sun stands between Earth and Mars and you can't communicate with Curiosity, what kind of things will the team be doing?

We as a team will try to focus on getting more SAM and CheMin results. But mostly it will be the engineers working with Curiosity to make absolutely sure that she'll be safe during conjunction, while we have no ability to communicate.

There was a big hoopla over your NPR interview back in November. How did you feel going into that?

It was just a simple misunderstanding. My enthusiasm was about the proven capability of the payload.

Once you see an instrument as complex as SAM have everything work on it perfectly for the second time, that's when you feel really good about the mission. I believe that, even without the results that we announced that, between the landing and the ability of the rover that was doing as well as it did and that all this sophisticated instrument payload technology was working as well as it has, that this would be historic.

It means that we as explorers can continue to do this. Even if we didn't find the stuff that we had set out to discover, you can at least turn around and say we have the capability to do this at one of the other landing sites.

Gale was a site that the team was just really happy with. It was one that we all embraced with very strong consensus as a place that harbored a lot of potential, though we didn't think that we would know about it this soon.

I think you look at something as complicated as this mission, and when you see it all working, that's what makes you feel like it succeeded.

What would you be most excited to see or discover on Mars with Curiosity?

Well, this is it. I feel at this point the rover is not going to ride off into the sunset. We're going to continue to be as aggressive and as focused and determined as we've been in the past to keep exploring.

At this point it would be an issue of what additional things we would like to see. Geologically speaking, we as a science team see that the base of Mt. Sharp has different ancient environments. We have geologic evidence that suggests there are things there that are different than they are here, and I would like for Curiosity to discover as many potentially different habitable environments as possible. So we have more to go.

Then of course, this is one that you can always hope for but you have to temper it with realistic expectation, and that is to find more complex organics.

Life on Mars: Water and lifelike landscape found; now, shhhhh...they are going to look for lif...er..organics

John Grotzinger talks about once-flowing rivers, the drinkable water—and when we’ll walk on the red planet

by Kate Lunau on Saturday, March 23, 2013 6:00am - 1 Comment

On March 12, John Grotzinger and a team of NASA scientists made a stunning announcement: Mars once had the right conditions for life, with flowing surface water so benign we might drink it. This finding comes courtesy of the Curiosity rover, which drilled and analyzed a rock sample from an ancient stream bed at Gale Crater on Mars. It’s the first habitable environment we know of, other than on Earth. As the first primitive forms of life were emerging here, it now seems possible life might have been taking hold on Mars, too. John Grotzinger is chief scientist on Curiosity, which has been exploring the Martian surface since Aug. 5, 2012. This was the last question. We moved it up to the top where it belongs:

Q: What’s next for Curiosity?

A: Finishing up what we’re doing here. Trying our hand at looking for organics. Then we’re off to Mount Sharp [a 5.5-km-tall mountain of sedimentary rock] to decipher the record of planetary history and detect more, and different kinds, of habitable environments.

Q: Scientists have found evidence of water on Mars before. What about this new finding tells you life could have existed there?

A: We’re excited because we’re getting a peek at what we call “grey Mars,” instead of red Mars. [Curiosity’s drill cuttings were green-grey in colour, not red like the surface of Mars, which is highly oxidized.] We’re seeing not just the presence of water, but water with a chemical composition that looks friendly toward microbial life. This is the kind of water that, if you drank a glass, you wouldn’t keel over and curl up, although I’m not sure I would want to plumb it into an urban district. We also see a diversity of minerals, which vary in their oxidation state. We think of these minerals at Gale Crater as though they were little batteries [which can give energy to microbes].

Q: How much water are we talking about? Was it ankle-deep or hip-deep?

A: There would have been flowing rivers at one point. At the ends of these rivers, there may have been lakes. We don’t know how long the lake was around for; it could have dried up very quickly. But it looks like we found that place.

Q: How long ago was this?

A: Most of us think it’s certainly greater than three billion years. It could be 3.5 billion. This is the same time we see the very oldest records of life on Earth—[when] life may have been evolving on Earth.

Q: So what happened? Why did the habitable environment on Mars disappear?

A: It could be related to the termination of plate tectonics. On Earth, plate tectonics involves churning [of metals] within the mantle and core. When they circulate, it generates a magnetic field, and gives rise to something we call the magnetosphere, which has electrical charges that deflect the cosmic and solar wind that comes to Earth. We already know that, if you stay out in the sun too long, that’s bad for you. If you were on the surface of Mars today, you would not last very long—because of all the harmful cosmic and solar radiation. And so the thought is, maybe Mars lost that protective envelope, and with it, Mars may have lost atmosphere. Mars has a much lower gravity, about one-third of Earth’s. The thought is that the very light gases—things like hydrogen and oxygen—got stripped away into space. The atmosphere on Mars today is much, much thinner than Earth’s: it’s about one-thousandth of Earth’s, but we think there’s a chance that at one time, it may have been as thick as Earth’s. It was apocalyptic climate change on Mars that changed it.

Q: Astronomers now say there are probably hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone. If we know that habitable environments can exist off Earth—even right next door—what does that tell us about the chance there’s life elsewhere in the galaxy?

A: When you can confirm an ancient aqueous environment to be this benign, on a planet that’s as foreign as Mars, you’re left to wonder. These are both terrestrial planets; they both have the same prebiotic chemistry available. It seems like the odds of prebiotic reactions happening that did create life could have more readily happened on Mars than we ever would have guessed.

Q: Based on this, do you think there could be life on Mars today? Is there still water at the surface, or under the surface?

A: We’re not equipped to do a life-detection mission. But there are orbiter missions that have such high-resolution cameras that they’re able to see places that we call “slope streaks.” It looks like, on the sunlit side of some hill slopes, there might be places where water could be emerging today. I think most people would agree the current surface environment of Mars is very inhospitable. But if life once originated on Mars, and then the climate changed so dramatically, maybe these microorganisms took refuge in the subsurface. What we are describing is the kind of environment where very primitive microbes could have lived, whose only energy source is really the rocks themselves: they literally eat rocks. They don’t need sunlight, and they don’t need to be on the surface. They could exist in the subsurface. I think there’s a lot of interest on the part of NASA to try to explore those kinds of environments one day.

Q: On Earth, we’ve found microbes that can thrive in pretty much any environment imaginable, including deep underground.

A: Yeah. Absolutely. In the last 20 years of modern microbiology, we’ve learned about microbes that grow in extreme environments, and we call them extremophiles. They can live in very low pH; very high pH; very hot water, including boiling water. In the deep mines in Canada, in Timmins [Ont.], people have gone down and discovered that miles deep in the Earth, you find microbial communities. That’s the kind of environment we’re trying to describe with Curiosity.

Q: How much of a challenge was it for your team to analyze this rock sample? It was the first time a robot sent from Earth actually drilled on another planet.

A: It was a lot of work. There are so many things you have to check to make sure the rover is functioning, and that all the systems are operating, and that the arm is working and the turret at the end of the arm that holds the drill is working, and that it’s all precisely placed. Then you look for a rock that you think will be scientifically interesting, but that when you drill it, it won’t just turn into quicksand or something. We had to worry about all of these details, and then we had the hand-wringing after drilling the rock. We had to wait a couple of sols [Martian days] until we could get visual confirmation that we had processed a sample. We put maybe a baby Aspirin–size sample into the instruments. It just turns out we hit pay dirt.

Q: Now that NASA has a plutonium-powered, car-sized rover driving around on Mars, how soon will you be able to put some human astronauts there?

A: The key technology for getting humans to Mars is being able to bring them home. It’s a longer trip than the moon, but more importantly, Mars has real gravity. So you have to develop a vehicle that will lift something off the surface. The plan is to first do a Mars sample return: to build another rover, drive it around, collect samples and then bring them back. This would be a set of missions, and [it would] take probably a couple of decades. It’s in the planning stages now.

[We would start by building] basically the same kind of rover as Curiosity, which would not just drill, but collect sample cores, roughly the size of pens or pencils. It would then cache those cores for return to Earth. The cache would be something that looks like a bowling ball. The next decade, we would send a retrieval vehicle that would go pick up the bowling ball and put it into orbit around Mars. And then, a couple years after that, you’d send a retrieval vehicle that would go get the bowling ball and return it to Earth. Those three steps are what should pave the way for human exploration of Mars.

Q: If we brought a core sample from Mars back to Earth, I’d imagine scientists could do much more with it than Curiosity can manage, even with its high-tech tool kit.

A: As soon as you get a sample back to Earth, you’ve got instruments that work at such high levels of accuracy. There would be other elements and minerals you could measure. We’re beginning to get a whiff of organics with Curiosity, but we’re never quite sure: is it contamination we brought with us? The amount we’re seeing is small enough that we have to be very careful with what we say. Whereas, if you bring a sample back to Earth, you could work with tiny amounts to find out whether there is organic matter there, and if it has anything to do with biology.

Q: Organics are a key ingredient to life. If Curiosity makes a confirmed find of organic compounds on Mars, what will that mean?

A: The solar system is full of organics. We just had an announcement of organics on the dark side of Mercury. [The organics they found were similar to tar and coal, and are believed to be delivered by comets and asteroids.] Meteorites come into Earth full of organics. So, if Curiosity finds organics and they aren’t contamination we brought from Earth, then they either came from Mars or somewhere else in the solar system. If we determine they came from Mars, we have to figure out whether they were manufactured by a biological process, or not.

Mars rover discovering clean water used Wyoming bentonite for test

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14 hours ago  •  By JAN FALSTAD/Billings Gazette

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The results of the mineral tests sent scientists, including one in Billings, into a happy orbit.

At a site about one-third of a mile east of where the rover landed eight months ago, Curiosity apparently found proof that the ancient climate on Mars once contained clean liquid water and enough water to possibly support primitive microbial life.

Back in Billings, Richard Brown was thrilled about the news because his family’s business, Wyo-Ben Inc., supplied NASA with bentonite that helped calibrate Curiosity’s instruments.

“What we gave them was reference materials, so they’d know what they are looking at when they got to Mars,” Brown said.

Tests from the Mars sample showed X-ray diffraction patterns that were similar to the Wyoming bentonite. That suggests the Earth and Martian rocks contained the same clay mineral called smectite, which is the principle component of bentonite and can only be formed in water, Brown said.

“It could be sea water or lake water, but is has to have some amount of salts in it or it could be hot thermal water like the water in Yellowstone National Park,” said Brown.

However, the careful Brown, who has a deep interest in science, quickly added that Wyo-Ben can only take credit for playing “a tiny part” in helping NASA recognize some clay minerals on Mars. The discovery suggests Mars once had enough water over an extended period perhaps 3 billion years ago to possibly support extremophiles -- life that can live in extreme environments.

Curiosity isn’t equipped to test directly for life. But the rover found carbon, sulfur and oxygen and other elements present in forms that life on earth uses, NASA said.

As a kid, Brown skipped school to watch every NASA manned space launch and dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Brown is Wyo-Ben’s vice president of resources and his brother, David Brown, is company president.

During the 1920s, their grandfather cobbled together several Big Horn Basin bentonite properties. In 1951, their father, Keith Brown, started Wyo-Ben in Billings and the company mines bentonite -- which has hundreds of uses from women’s cosmetics to cat litter and oil and gas drilling -- near Greybull, Wyo.

Richard Brown is a long-time member and past president of The Clay Minerals Society, where he met NASA scientists who later asked him for bentonite samples.

With an undergraduate biology degree and a master’s degree in plant genetics from Arizona State, Brown is keenly interested in clay.

Wyo-Ben shipped fist-sized samples of bentonite to NASA when the Opportunity and Spirit rovers headed to Mars in 2003.

When NASA scientists called asking for more bentonite for Curiosity’s trip, they wanted loaf-size samples.

“That apparently was so they could drill them and test them before trying to drill into Martian rock,” Brown said.

This isn’t the first discovery of water on Mars.

“Almost a decade ago, Opportunity and Spirit found evidence of water on Mars, but it would have been acidic and very salty or inhospitable for life,” Brown said.

Last year, Curiosity found evidence that Mars once had scarce and acidic water at a site called Yellowknife Bay.

After last week's exciting discovery of evidence of purer water, computer problems sidelined the six-wheeled Curiosity, delaying exploration for two days on this $2.5 billion Mars mission. Next month, Curiosity will go dark when the sun comes between Mars and Earth, blocking clear communications.

In 2016, NASA plans on sending up another stationary probe to look for evidence of seismic activity, including “marsquakes,” on a planet where “volcanoes once raged,” scientists said.

But the curious scientist in Billings is waiting for another seven years to pass.

By 2020, a more advanced Mars rover will head to what NASA calls a "rocky, cold and sterile" planet with instruments capable of detecting extremophile life.

“That’s when things get really interesting,” Brown said.

Because intense cosmic radiation appears to have destroyed Mar’s atmosphere, scientists will likely have to dig for water, Brown said.

“Mars is too cold, so water has either sublimated – gone directly into vapor and vanished – or it’s in the form of ice under the surface, with the exception, perhaps of the poles,” he said.

If life is found on Mars and Earthlings realize they aren’t alone in the universe, Brown anticipates that knowledge may shift the way humans view themselves, and perhaps relate with each other.

“All the math says there’s no reasonable way to expect we are alone,” he said.

Kepler, a NASA mission to discover new planets using an infrared telescope in space, has identified about 114 planets and 2,740 candidates since its launch in March 2009, according to NASA.

That’s a rate of one new planet discovered every two weeks. Using Kepler’s findings, NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy.

At the very least, finding microbes on Mars would intensify human's search for a rocky planet in a "Goldilocks" zone.

“Close to a star, but not too close so the water boils away, and not so far away that it freezes,” Brown said. “Then you’ve got the possibility of finding the building blocks of life.”

When earth is closest to Mars, the planets are about 35 million miles apart. At their furthest orbit, the distance is more like 250 million miles. Sending humans to Mars would mean six months to get there, a year waiting for the planets to reach their nearest orbit again, and then a six-month return voyage.

“If they were asking for volunteers, my hand would go up,” Brown said. “That would be an adventure of a lifetime.”

Oops: Wrong again: Actually, the Universe Older by 100 million years and expanding slower Than Previously Thought -

March 21, 2013: Europe's Planck spacecraft has obtained the most accurate and detailed map ever made of the oldest light in the universe. The map results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than scientists thought, and is 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years older than previous estimates. The data also show there is less dark energy and more matter in the universe than previously known.

"Astronomers worldwide have been on the edge of their seats waiting for this map," said Joan Centrella, Planck program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These measurements are profoundly important to many areas of science, as well as future space missions. We are so pleased to have worked with the European Space Agency on such a historic endeavor."

The newly estimated expansion rate of the universe, known as Hubble's constant, is 67.15 plus or minus 1.2 kilometers/second/megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years. This is less than prior estimates derived from space telescopes, such as NASA's Spitzer and Hubble, using a different technique. The new estimate of dark matter content in the universe is 26.8 percent, up from 24 percent, while dark energy falls to 68.3 percent, down from 71.4 percent. Normal matter now is 4.9 percent, up from 4.6 percent.

This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected with the greatest precision yet by the Planck mission. Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration. Video

Planck is a European Space Agency mission. NASA contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck's science instruments, and U.S., European and Canadian scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

The map, based on the mission's first 15.5 months of all-sky observations, reveals tiny temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, ancient light that has traveled for billions of years from the very early universe to reach us. The patterns of light represent the seeds of galaxies and clusters of galaxies we see around us today.

"As that ancient light travels to us, matter acts like an obstacle course getting in its way and changing the patterns slightly," said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. project scientist for Planck at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The Planck map reveals not only the very young universe, but also matter, including dark matter, everywhere in the universe."

Planck launched in 2009 and has been scanning the skies ever since, mapping the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the theorized big bang that created our universe. This relic radiation provides scientists with a snapshot of the universe 370,000 years after the big bang.

The cosmic microwave background is remarkably uniform over the entire sky, but tiny variations reveal the imprints of sound waves triggered by quantum fluctuations in the universe just moments after it was born. These imprints, appearing as splotches in the Planck map, are the seeds from which matter grew, forming stars and galaxies. Prior balloon-based and space missions learned a great deal by studying these patterns, including NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which earned the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics. Planck is the successor to these satellites, covering a wider range of light frequencies with improved sensitivity and resolution.

This graphic illustrates the evolution of satellites designed to measure ancient light leftover from the big bang that created our universe 13.8 billion years ago. Planck has created the sharpest all-sky map ever made of the universe's cosmic microwave background, revealing light patterns as small as one-twelfth of a degree on the sky.

The age, contents and other fundamental traits of our universe are described in the so-called "Standard Model" of cosmology, which has been developed over the years by astronomers. These new data have allowed researchers to test and improve the Standard Model with the greatest precision yet. At the same time, some curious features are observed that don't quite fit with the simple picture. For example, the model assumes the sky is the same everywhere, but the light patterns are asymmetrical on two halves of the sky, and there is a spot extending over a patch of sky that is larger than expected.

"On one hand, we have a simple model that fits our observations extremely well, but on the other hand, we see some strange features which force us to rethink some of our basic assumptions," said Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency's Planck project scientist based in the Netherlands. "This is the beginning of a new journey, and we expect our continued analysis of Planck data will help shed light on this conundrum."

Complete results from Planck, which still is scanning the skies, will be released in 2014.

Rover bounces back after 2 technical problems

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has recovered from two back-to-back technical snafus, mission project manager Richard Cook at Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, and would be conducting more science starting Thursday. (NASA / March 19, 2013)

• Mars rock yields building blocks of life
• One family recalls living on Mars time with NASA rover Curiosity
• Mars engineer did his best to trip up Curiosity rover
• 'Giddy' NASA official asks Curiosity scientists if they'd go to Mars
• Mars Curiosity rover on spring break after hitting pay dirt [video chat]
• Photos: Mars rover mission

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By Amina Khan

March 19, 2013, 12:22 p.m.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is up and running after a pair of back-to-back computer scares, officials at Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, and should be back to its science tasks in the next two days.

The rover has emerged from a weekend of safe-mode after engineers on the mission discovered a relatively minor glitch in the rover’s software, according to Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook -- one essentially corrected by simply deleting a file.

"It cost us a couple days," Cook said in an interview. "But it turned out to be something we understood very easily so we were able to recover very quickly."

The rover would likely be back in business running science tasks by Thursday, he added.

The delay came just a week after Mars scientists announced the rover's drill had dug up evidence that the Red Planet would have been suitable for primitive life.

In fact, the software problem cropped up just as Curiosity was recovering from an unrelated hardware scare that forced the engineers to switch over to the rover’s backup computer system.

"We were right in the final stages of getting back to the science when we had that little glitch over the weekend," Cook said.

This more serious memory problem was likely caused by a recent solar storm, Cook said, in which charged particles may have damaged the rover’s hardware. Mission engineers tried to sort out the issue before deciding to switch from the main computers (the A side) to the backups (the B side).

Scientists are often loathe to make the switch, Cook explained, because the backup computers basically have to be "taught" all the rules that Curiosity’s main brain has learned through experience. And it’s a process that takes time.

Now on the B side, the rover is back on track. But the engineers are still planning to get to the bottom of the original hardware issue. 

"The one from three weeks ago – there’s still some questions about it more in the form of what was the thing that originally caused the memory corruption," Cook said. 

That’s a mystery that will have to wait to be solved until May – in about two weeks the sun is set to come between the Earth and Mars in what’s known as "solar conjunction," blocking a clear signal to the rover.

Mars Discovery Highlights Need for Sample-Return Mission, Scientist Says

by Miriam Kramer, SPACE.com Staff Writer

Date: 15 March 2013 Time: 03:50 PM ET

inShare1

The announcement this week that Mars definitely could have supported some form of life in the ancient past is an unmistakable reminder that future missions to the Red Planet should focus on bringing Martian rock samples back to Earth, a celebrated planetary scientist says.

NASA unveiled the discovery on Tuesday (March 12) with a bold announcement that Mars could have supported primitive life at some point billions of years ago. The Martian find was made with the help of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, the largest rover ever to explore the Red Planet. But in order to create a clear picture of the story of habitability and life on Mars, scientists will need to get their hands on fresh samples of the planet collected by an ambitious future mission.

Rendezvous above Mars. This artist's view of the proposed Mars Sample Return mission shows an orbiting sample container loaded with martian rock and soil specimens lining up for capture by an Earth returnvehicle.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL

View full size image

"On the one hand, it shows what we can do with instruments on the surface of Mars," Bruce Betts, the director of projects at the Planetary Society, told SPACE.com. "We'll always be able to do more with our labs on Earth than what we can do on Mars."

The Curiosity rover was able to bore into a Martian rock and find evidence of a habitable environment, but more comprehensive work can be done in labs on Earth, Betts said.

For this reason, scientists like Betts have campaigned to have sample return added as non-negotiable for the next mission to the Red Planet.

NASA is taking the concept seriously. Sample return is at the top of the space agency's list when planning for missions to Mars in the next decade, Betts added. NASA has placed it as the highest priority for any new missions to the Red Planet. [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]

"You want rocks that are carefully collected," Betts said.

It's important to know exactly where the rocks are coming from, Betts said. If scientists know the context in which the rocks were found, it will help them analyze them in a broader context. 

Although there are no solid plans to build sample return into a mission currently in development, future NASA missions are using other means to investigate the Martian interior and exterior.

The MAVEN mission — a Mars orbiter launching later this year — will investigate the ionosphere of the Red Planet to see how carbon dioxide, oxygen and other compounds could have dissipated over time, leaving Mars with the cold, arid atmosphere scientists see today. 

NASA's InSight Mars is a lander that will burrow deep into the Martian dirt to learn more about the planet's geological evolution. It is on track to launch in 2016. The agency is also planning to launch a new Mars rover in 2020, but it won't have the capability for sample return. 

Europe and Russia are also planning new Mars missions together, including an orbiter and the ExoMars rover.

NASA's announcement on Tuesday means that astronomers are one step closer to understanding what a primitive Mars could have looked like, something that missions in the future will help clarify, Betts added.

"I think the findings like today's continue to increase the interest in Mars as a complex and interesting place," Betts said.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

NASA Mars Scientist Grotzinger explains

Recent Curiosity Rover’s findings

By GRETA SHUM

CONTRIBUTOR

Published: Thursday, March 14th, 2013

Mars Science Lab Project Manager and professor of geology at California Institute of Technology John Grotzinger presented new evidence of ancient habitability on Mars, based on the findings from the Curiosity rover, in a lecture on Thursday evening. On Tuesday, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. announced that Curiosity’s current location in Gale Crater very likely could have hosted microbial life.   

Grotzinger explained that this particular location was chosen because it promised to have relevance to multiple interests in the search for habitability on Mars. The rover’s eventual destination for the rover is Mount Sharp.

Researchers receiving Curiosity’s findings back on Earth were first struck by the rock’s surprising color — on the famous Red Planet, the rock in Gale Crater was gray.

“Red Mars turned gray at Gale Crater,” Grotzinger said.

The rock found in Gale Crater has been notable to scientists because it suggests a long history of interaction with neutral pH water. This water, which would likely have had a low salinity concentration, would have been far more inviting to microbial life than any other location.

Researchers found that the magnetite found in the rock was not fully oxidized. The discovery of both oxidized and reduced substances in these samples suggests that microorganisms that subsist simply on the chemical energy potential present within a rock could have lived within the Gale Crater rock.

Back on Earth, scientists like Princeton’s own Tullis C. Onstott have touted the importance and vitality of prokaryotes that live in extreme habitats like these in recent years. These so-called “extremophiles” were probably the first organisms on Earth, Grotzinger explained.

“This is the most complex spacecraft ever to be sent to the surface of another planet,” Grotzinger said as he explained an image of Curiosity’s insides. Curiosity is equipped with tools with names like CheMin, Curiosity’s X-ray diffraction instrument, and Dust Removal Tool.

One of the challenges of the Mars mission has been the need for vigilant communication with the rover, Grotzinger explained. Furthermore, the scientists must take meticulous precautions in every action. Not only must every movement be simulated on Earth before it can happen on Mars, but every sample must be taken several times in order to prevent contamination.

This time commitment can become a problem when Mars begins its transit behind the Sun. For that period of about a month, the Earth will not be able to communicate by radio signals with Curiosity.

Grotzinger expressed his anticipation for the coming Mars Sample Return Mission scheduled for launch in 2020.

SAM’s Mars meal report awaits star-struck computer repair

PASADENA, Calif. - Two compact laboratories inside NASA's Mars rover Curiosity were fed the first sample of rock powder ever collected from the interior of a rock on Mars just a few hours before solar or other starry radiation shut down science for now Mars.

Either using the backup – the only backup – computer or by finding a way to restart the A computer, the Curiosity science team members hope to use the laboratories to analyze the rock powder in the coming days and weeks.

The rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments received portions of the sample on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 22 and 23, respectively, and began inspecting the powder.

"Data from the instruments have confirmed the deliveries," said Curiosity Mission Manager Jennifer Trosper of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The powder comes from Curiosity drilling into rock target "John Klein" on Feb. 8. One or more additional portions from the same initial sample may be delivered to the instruments as analysis proceeds.

During a two-year prime mission, researchers are using Curiosity's 10 science instruments to assess whether the study area in Gale Crater on Mars ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. With one computer damaged, the two year mission might be dramatically shortened as the solar storm cycle increases this year, bombarding Mars and Curiosity with damaging plasma and particles traveling at a million miles-an-hour.

Scientific investigations by the rover were suspended Wednesday ending the week-long internal study of the Mars powder. The spacecraft remained in communications at all scheduled communication windows on Wednesday, but it did not send recorded data, only current status information.

The status information revealed that the computer had not switched to the usual daily "sleep" mode when planned. Diagnostic work in a testing simulation at JPL indicates the situation involved corrupted memory at an A-side memory location used for addressing memory files. Memory corruption in space is often caused by damage from solar or other forms of intense, penetrating and damaging radiation.

Solar Cycle Update: Twin Peaks? Things are looking testy for Curiosity (see below)

March 1, 2013: Something unexpected is happening on the sun.  2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max, the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Yet 2013 has arrived and solar activity is relatively low.  Sunspot numbers are well below their values in 2011, and strong solar flares have been infrequent for many months.

The quiet has led some observers to wonder if forecasters missed the mark. Solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center has a different explanation: 

"This is solar maximum," he suggests. "But it looks different from what we expected because it is double peaked."

A new ScienceCast video explores the puzzling behavior of ongoing Solar Cycle 24. Play it

Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back and forth like a simple pendulum.  At one end of the cycle, there is a quiet time with few sunspots and flares.  At the other end, Solar Max brings high sunspot numbers and solar storms. It’s a regular rhythm that repeats every 11 years.

Reality, however, is more complicated. Astronomers have been counting sunspots for centuries, and they have seen that the solar cycle is not perfectly regular. For one thing, the back-and-forth swing in sunspot counts can take anywhere from 10 to 13 years to complete; also, the amplitude of the cycle varies.  Some solar maxima are very weak, others very strong.

Pesnell notes yet another complication: "The last two solar maxima, around 1989 and 2001, had not one but two peaks."  Solar activity went up, dipped, then resumed, performing a mini-cycle that lasted about two years.

The same thing could be happening now.  Sunspot counts jumped in 2011, dipped in 2012, and Pesnell expects them to rebound again in 2013: "I am comfortable in saying that another peak will happen in 2013 and possibly last into 2014," he predicts.

Another curiosity of the solar cycle is that the sun's hemispheres do not always peak at the same time.  In the current cycle, the south has been lagging behind the north.  The second peak, if it occurs, will likely feature the southern hemisphere playing catch-up, with a surge in activity south of the sun's equator.

Recent sunspot counts fall short of predictions. Credit: Dr. Tony Philips & NOAA/SWPC [full plot]

Pesnell is a leading member of the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel, a blue-ribbon group of solar physicists who assembled in 2006 and 2008 to forecast the next Solar Max. At the time, the sun was experiencing its deepest minimum in nearly a hundred years.  Sunspot numbers were pegged near zero and x-ray flare activity flat-lined for months at a time.  Recognizing that deep minima are often followed by weak maxima, and pulling together many other threads of predictive evidence, the panel issued this statement:

"The Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel has reached a consensus. The panel has decided that the next solar cycle (Cycle 24) will be below average in intensity, with a maximum sunspot number of 90. Given the date of solar minimum and the predicted maximum intensity, solar maximum is now expected to occur in May 2013. Note, this is not a unanimous decision, but a supermajority of the panel did agree."

Given the tepid state of solar activity in Feb. 2013, a maximum in May now seems unlikely.

"We may be seeing what happens when you predict a single amplitude and the Sun responds with a double peak," comments Pesnell.

Incidentally, Pesnell notes a similarity between Solar Cycle 24, underway now, and Solar Cycle 14, which had a double-peak during the first decade of the 20^th century. If the two cycles are in fact twins, “it would mean one peak in late 2013 and another in 2015.”

No one knows for sure what the sun will do next.  It seems likely, though, that the end of 2013 could be a lot livelier than the beginning.

As predicted: Mars Rover Curiosity Has First Big Malfunction afflicted by solar storm

Cook said, similar problems were caused by high-energy solar and cosmic ray strikes. He said that's probably what happened this time.

for National Geographic News

Published March 1, 2013

The Mars rover Curiosity experienced its first significant malfunction on Wednesday, when one of its two onboard computers became corrupted and failed to turn off and enter "sleep mode" as planned.

The Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent up commands to switch all operations from the corrupted A computer to the twin B computer early Thursday morning, according to a Thursday NASA statement.

Most spacecraft have a backup computer to step in if the primary computer fails. (Related: Meet One of Curiosity's Earthbound Twins.)

Richard Cook, project manager for the Curiosity project, said the problem was the most serious experienced by the rover so far in its nearly 7 months on the red planet.

Cook said the team was most concerned Wednesday night, before they got a handle on the nature of the problem. But once they began to understand better, it became clear that switching to the other computer was necessary and unlikely to have long-term consequences.

He said he hoped Curiosity would resume science work in about a week. (Related: Manned Mars Mission Announced by Dennis Tito Group.)

On other space missions, Cook said, similar problems were caused by high-energy solar and cosmic ray strikes. He said that's probably what happened this time.

Curiosity has protections against such high-energy disruptions, but the problem was compounded by what appears to have been the location of the strike—in the directory, or "table of contents," of the computer's memory. Cook said the location of the strike appears to have caused the computer to get stuck in an endless loop.

While previous rovers experienced many so-called "anomalies" during the early part of their treks, the much larger and more complex Curiosity has been almost trouble-free since its dramatic, pinpoint landing last August. (Related: Psychological Challenges of Manned Mars Mission.)

That changed Wednesday when the spacecraft stopped sending recorded data back to Earth, though it did continue sending "current status" information.

The problem was sent to the Curiosity "anomaly team," which decided the computer swap was needed. The swap occurred around Thursday around 2:30 a.m. Pacific Time.

"While we are resuming operations on the B-side, we are also working to determine the best way to restore the A-side as a viable backup," said Magdy Bareh, leader of the mission's anomaly resolution team and a JPL engineer.

After switching to the B computer—which was used during part of Curiosity's flight to Mars but has never been used on the surface—the rover went into "safe mode" and stopped almost all activities.

The vehicle is currently holding powder from the first rock ever drilled on Mars, and analysis of that precious content will now have to wait.

Even if the rover is fully operational again in a week, the amount of science it can perform is limited. That's because the sun comes between Mars and the Earth in early April, partially blocking the path for radio commands for an entire month.

The Curiosity team had planned to send back science data from Mars during that period-called "solar conjunction"-but had decided not to send up any commands. The team was concerned that the commands could be disrupted by the sun and consequently harm the rover computer.

In Memoriam: David S. McKay

Posted By Bruce Betts

2013/02/21 06:11 CST

Topics: obituary, Phobos and Shuttle LIFE

I am sad to report that NASA scientist David S. McKay passed away yesterday, Feb. 20, 2013 at age 77.   I got to know David in his role as a Co-Investigator on The Planetary Society's Phobos LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) project.  David was engaged early on in the project and was engaged particularly in recommendations of organisms to fly in space, and in suggestions for members of our science team.  He was enthusiastic about science and a pleasure to work with.  He had long been a friend of the Society prior to the LIFE experiment.

More broadly, David made significant contributions to planetary science over his long career, as discussed more below.  He is most famous with the public for being the lead author on the 1996 paper that announced possible evidence for life in a Martian meteorite.  There has been and continues to be considerable debate and research into that particular finding, but there is no doubt that that paper and those that followed helped spawn a more robust Mars program, helped direct the program's course more towards searching for past habitibility of Mars, and helped lead to increasing the profile and funding for astrobiology research at NASA.  In addition, let us not forget that his contributions to planetary science were much broader as well, particularly his contributions to lunar studies in a 47 year career at NASA. 

David S. McKay

Planetary Scientist David McKay of NASA Johnson Space Center.

Below, I reproduce an email from Stephen Mackwell, the Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, which does a nice job of discussing David's career.  Godspeed, David McKay.

David S. McKay, Chief Scientist for Astrobiology at the NASA Johnson Space Center, passed away on February 20, 2013. During the Apollo program, McKay gave the first men to walk on the Moon training in geology. In recent years, McKay was perhaps best known for being the first author of a scientific paper postulating past life on Mars on the basis of evidence in martian meteorite ALH 84001. This paper has become one of the most heavily cited papers in planetary science. The NASA Astrobiology Institute was founded partially as a result of community interest in this paper and related topics.

As a graduate student in geology at Rice University, McKay was present at John F. Kennedy's speech in 1962 announcing the goal of landing a man on the Moon within the decade. Kennedy’s speech inspired his interest in helping to train the Apollo astronauts in geology. He was a chief trainer for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their last geology field trip in West Texas. On July 20, 1969, McKay was the only geologist present in the Apollo Mission Control Room in Houston when Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon.

McKay studied lunar dust since the return of the first Apollo 11 samples in 1969, and has contributed over 200 publications on this topic. As a result of this effort, McKay contributed major discoveries, including the source of vapor deposition on lunar soil grains, the formation of nanophase iron globules on lunar soil grains, the processes on the Moon that contribute to grain size distribution, and insight into space weathering and the chemically activated nature of in situ lunar dust.

McKay was honored by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) by having an asteroid named after him in 2002. His IAU citation mentions his years of work on lunar samples as well as the positive effect his research on martian meteorites has had on planetary research. McKay was also a recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student Award at Rice University, the NASA Superior Achievement Award for Lunar Science Contributions; the Laurels Award from Aviation Week and Space Technology, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, and the Distinguished Texas Scientist Award from the Texas Academy of Science.

McKay was with NASA for more than 47 years, and made substantial contributions to science during his career. He will be missed.

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the first sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS     › Full image and caption       › Latest images       › Gallery       › Videos

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows details of rock texture and color in an area where the rover's Dust Removal Tool (DRT) brushed away dust that was on the rock. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Honeybee Robotics/LANL/CNES
› Full image and caption

This full-resolution image from NASA's Curiosity shows the turret of tools at the end of the rover's extended robotic arm on Aug. 20, 2012. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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This image shows the location of the 150-micrometer sieve screen on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, a device used to remove larger particles from samples before delivery to science instruments. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior.

Transfer of the powdered-rock sample into an open scoop was visible for the first time in images received Wednesday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock," said JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity. "Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown."

The drill on Curiosity's robotic arm took in the powder as it bored a 2.5-inch (6.4-centimeter) hole into a target on flat Martian bedrock on Feb. 8. The rover team plans to have Curiosity sieve the sample and deliver portions of it to analytical instruments inside the rover.

The scoop now holding the precious sample is part of Curiosity's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device. During the next steps of processing, the powder will be enclosed inside CHIMRA and shaken once or twice over a sieve that screens out particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 microns) across.

Small portions of the sieved sample later will be delivered through inlet ports on top of the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

In response to information gained during testing at JPL, the processing and delivery plan has been adjusted to reduce use of mechanical vibration. The 150-micron screen in one of the two test versions of CHIMRA became partially detached after extensive use, although it remained usable. The team has added precautions for use of Curiosity's sampling system while continuing to study the cause and ramifications of the separation.

The sample comes from a fine-grained, veiny sedimentary rock called "John Klein," named in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. The rock was selected for the first sample drilling because it may hold evidence of wet environmental conditions long ago. The rover's laboratory analysis of the powder may provide information about those conditions.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using the Curiosity rover with its 10 science instruments to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater ever has offered an environment favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

An image of the drill's rock powder held in the scoop is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16729.html.

For more about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

The UN Braces for Stormy Space Weather

Feb. 13, 2013:  Rewind to the late 1950s. The Soviet Union had just launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The United States, caught short, was scrambling to catch up, kick-starting a Cold War space race that would last for decades.  Space was up for grabs, and it seemed like anything could happen.

The UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS). Credit: UN Information Service

Into this void stepped the United Nations. In 1958, the General Assembly "recognizing the common interest of mankind in furthering the peaceful use of outer space ... and desiring to avoid the extension of present national rivalries into this new field...." established the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).  COPUOS became a forum for development of laws and treaties governing space-related activities.  Moreover, it set the stage for international cooperation on problems that no one nation could handle alone.

"This is a significant development," says Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters in Washington.  "By adding space weather to the regular agenda of the COPUOS Science and Technical Subcommittee, the UN is recognizing solar activity as a concern on par with orbital debris and close-approaching asteroids."

Space weather is the outer-space equivalent of weather on Earth.  Instead of wind, rain and snow, however, space has radiation storms, the solar wind, flares and coronal mass ejections. The source of space weather is the sun, and although solar storms are launched 93 million miles from Earth, they can make themselves felt on our planet.

This week, members of the Science and Technical Subcommittee heard about some of the potential economic impacts of space weather. For instance, modern oil and gas drilling frequently involve directional drilling to tap oil and gas reservoirs deep in the Earth. This drilling technique depends on accurate positioning using global navigation systems. Drill heads could go awry, however, if the sun interferes with GPS reception.  Solar energetic particles at the magnetic poles can force the re-routing of international airline flights resulting in delays and increased fuel consumption.  Ground induced currents generated by magnetic storms can damage transformers and increase corrosion in critical energy pipelines.

 

Permanent damage to the Salem New Jersey Nuclear Plant GSU Transformer caused by the severe geomagnetic storm of March 13, 1989. Photos courtesy of PSE&G.

The elevation of space weather on COPUOS’s agenda coincides with the 10^th anniversary of the International Living With a Star Program on Feb. 14. The program is an ad hoc group of nations that got together in 2003 to lay the groundwork for worldwide cooperation in the study of space weather.  The UN will help take their efforts to the next level.

A NASA-funded study by the National Academy of Sciences lays out the economic consequences of severe space weather. More

Industrialized countries tend to have an abundance of monitoring stations.  They can keep track of local magnetism, ground currents, and ionization, and provide the data to researchers.  Developing countries are where the gaps are, particularly at low latitudes around Earth's magnetic equator. With assistance from the UN, researchers may be able to extend sensor networks into regions where it was once politically unfeasible.

Space weather might play a role in Earth’s climate, too. 

“The new permanent agenda item of the Science and Technology Subcommittee is an important opportunity to harness the effort of all Members to ensure coordinated global action,” comments Terry Onsager of the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Learn more about the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space at: http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/COPUOS/copuos.html

Delightful Candor and Detail As Curiosity Prepares for Drilling

Curiosity's Drill Undergoes Day and Night Load Testing As Rover Metals "Shrink" Under The Stress of Freezing Nights

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.

The rover carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars yesterday (Jan. 27). The tests enable engineers to check whether the amount of force applied to the hardware matches predictions for what would result from the commanded motions.

The next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill. At Curiosity's work site in Gale Crater, air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight. Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin.

The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., sent the rover commands yesterday to begin the overnight pre-load test today (Monday).

"We don't plan on leaving the drill in a rock overnight once we start drilling, but in case that happens, it is important to know what to expect in terms of stress on the hardware," said JPL's Daniel Limonadi, the lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system. "This test is done at lower pre-load values than we plan to use during drilling, to let us learn about the temperature effects without putting the hardware at risk."

Remaining preparatory steps will take at least the rest of this week. Some of these steps are hardware checks. Others will evaluate characteristics of the rock material at the selected drilling site on a patch of flat, veined rock called "John Klein."

Limonadi said, "We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity's first drilling. This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars."

An activity called the "drill-on-rock checkout" will use the hammering action of Curiosity's drill briefly, without rotation of the drill bit, for assurance that the back-and-forth percussion mechanism and associated control system are properly tuned for hitting a rock.

A subsequent activity called "mini-drill" is designed to produce a small ring of tailings -- powder resulting from drilling -- on the surface of the rock while penetrating less than eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters). This activity will not go deep enough to push rock powder into the drill's sample-gathering chamber. Limonadi said, "The purpose is to see whether the tailings are behaving the way we expect. Do they look like dry powder? That's what we want to confirm."

The rover team's activities this week are affected by the difference between Mars time and Earth time. To compensate for this, the team develops commands based on rover activities from two sols earlier. So, for example, the mini-drill activity cannot occur sooner than two sols after the drill-on-rock checkout.

Each Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than a 24-hour Earth day. By mid-February, the afternoon at Gale Crater, when Curiosity transmits information about results from the sol, will again be falling early enough in the California day for the rover team to plan each sol based on the previous sol's results.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More about Curiosity is online at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

"This is a record-setting close approach," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth."

A new ScienceCast video previews the close flyby of asteroid 2012 DA. Play it

Earth's neighborhood is littered with asteroids of all shapes and sizes, ranging from fragments smaller than beach balls to mountainous rocks many kilometers wide. Many of these objects hail from the asteroid belt, while others may be corpses of long-dead, burnt out comets. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program helps find and keep track of them, especially the ones that come close to our planet.

2012 DA14 is a fairly typical near-Earth asteroid. It measures some 50 meters wide, neither very large nor very small, and is probably made of stone, as opposed to metal or ice.  Yeomans estimates that an asteroid like 2012 DA14 flies past Earth, on average, every 40 years, yet actually strikes our planet only every 1200 years or so.

The impact of a 50-meter asteroid is not cataclysmic--unless you happen to be underneath it. Yeomans points out that a similar-sized object formed the mile wide Meteor Crater in Arizona when it struck about 50,000 years ago. "That asteroid was made of iron," he says, "which made it an especially potent impactor." Also, in 1908, something about the size of 2012 DA14 exploded in the atmosphere above Siberia, leveling hundreds of square miles of forest. Researchers are still studying the "Tunguska Event" for clues to the impacting object.

"2012 DA14 will definitely not hit Earth," emphasizes Yeomans. "The orbit of the asteroid is known well enough to rule out an impact."

A schematic diagram of the Feb 15th flyby. More

Even so, it will come interestingly close. NASA radars will be monitoring the space rock as it approaches Earth closer than many man-made satellites. Yeomans says the asteroid will thread the gap between low-Earth orbit, where the ISS and many Earth observation satellites are located, and the higher belt of geosynchronous satellites, which provide weather data and telecommunications.

"The odds of an impact with a satellite are extremely remote," he says. Almost nothing orbits where DA14 will pass the Earth.

NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert is scheduled to ping 2012 DA14 almost every day from Feb. 16th through 20th. The echoes will not only pinpoint the orbit of the asteroid, allowing researchers to better predict future encounters, but also reveal physical characteristics such as size, spin, and reflectivity. A key outcome of the observing campaign will be a 3D radar map showing the space rock from all sides.

During the hours around closest approach, the asteroid will brighten until it resembles a star of 8^th magnitude. Theoretically, that’s an easy target for backyard telescopes. The problem, points out Yeomans, is speed. “The asteroid will be racing across the sky, moving almost a full degree (or twice the width of a full Moon) every minute. That’s going to be hard to track.” Only the most experienced amateur astronomers are likely to succeed.

Those who do might experience a tiny chill when they look at their images. That really was a close shave.

For more information about 2012 DA and other asteroids of interest, visit NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program web site: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov

Great New Insight from Adam Mann

Crazy Alien Weather: Lightning-Filled Rocket Dust Storms of Mars

Image: A transient large dust storm on Mars, observed with NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, showing the planet before, during, and after a potential “rocket dust storm.” (Spiga, Aymeric, et al. DOI: 10.1002/jgre.20046)

Scientists have modeled the internal workings of lightning-filled “rocket dust storms” on Mars that rise at speeds 100 times faster than ordinary storms and inject dust high into the Martian atmosphere.

The Red Planet is a very dry and dusty place, with global storms that sometimes obscure the entire surface. Satellites orbiting Mars have seen persistent dust layers reaching very high altitudes, as much as 30 to 50 km above the ground, though scientists are at a loss to explain exactly how the dust got there.

Using a high-resolution model, researchers have shown that a thick blob-like dust pocket inside a storm may become heated by the sun, causing the surrounding atmosphere to warm quickly. Because hot air rises, these areas will shoot skyward super fast, much like a rocket launching into space, hence “rocket dust storms.”

“The vertical transport was so strong we want to come up with a kind of spectacular name, to give an idea of the very powerful rise,” said planetary scientist Aymeric Spiga from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, who is lead author on a paper describing the phenomena in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on Jan. 14.

Image: Electric charge buildup could create lightning in Martian dust storms. (NASA)

These speedily rising dust blobs can soar from near the surface to 30 or 40 km into the atmosphere in a matter of hours at speeds in excess of 10 meters per second (22 mph). This is far faster than the typical convection speeds in a dust storm of 0.1 meters per second (0.2 mph). Since the dust particles rub up against one another and create friction, the rocket dust storms may become charged with electrostatic forces, which could which could trigger fantastic lightning bolts.

Spiga and his team used detailed models of winds and dust on Mars to determine exactly how these rocket dust storms behave. Most previous models of Mars’ climate simulate large-scale global dust storms with fairly coarse resolution and so have not noticed the rocket storms. The team seeded their model with data from a dust storm observed by the OMEGA instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiting satellite and watched the rise of rocket storms.

Similar dust storms can’t happen on Earth. This is mainly because Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than our own, meaning that it gets quickly and efficiently heated when dust particles absorb sunlight and then emit thermal radiation.

But a comparable phenomenon occurs in grey cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds on Earth. The large accumulations of water particles in such clouds release latent heat, causing strong vertical motions and an extensive tall structure. Spiga’s team has used this Earthly analogy in the rocket dust storm’s more technical name, conio-cumulonimbus, from the Greek conious, which means dust.

“But I prefer to call them rocket dust storms,” Spiga said. “Then everyone knows what I’m talking about.”

Other researchers are impressed with the physical modeling done in the work. “I was a little surprised that such a small dust disturbance could remain intact over such long distances,” said planetary atmospheres scientist Scot Rafkin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The mechanism could help explain how long-lasting layers of dust climb so high in the Martian atmosphere, he says. 

Because they appear to be relatively rare, it may take a while to track down more rocket dust storms. But Spiga is hopeful they will be found by orbiting satellites, which may even image the lightning flashes inside them.

Video: Spiga, Aymeric, et al. “Rocket dust storms and detached dust layers in the Martian atmosphere,” JGR:Planets, DOI: 10.1002/jgre.20046

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NASA Orbiter Observations Point to 'Dry Ice' Snowfall on Mars

Carbon-Dioxide Snowfall on Mars

Observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have detected carbon-dioxide snow clouds on Mars and evidence of carbon-dioxide snow falling to the surface.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data have given scientists the clearest evidence yet of carbon-dioxide snowfalls on Mars. This reveals the only known example of carbon-dioxide snow falling anywhere in our solar system.

Frozen carbon dioxide, better known as "dry ice," requires temperatures of about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 125 Celsius), which is much colder than needed for freezing water. Carbon-dioxide snow reminds scientists that although some parts of Mars may look quite Earth-like, the Red Planet is very different. The report is being published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

"These are the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds," said the report's lead author, Paul Hayne of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We firmly establish the clouds are composed of carbon dioxide -- flakes of Martian air -- and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface."

The snowfalls occurred from clouds around the Red Planet's south pole in winter. The presence of carbon-dioxide ice in Mars' seasonal and residual southern polar caps has been known for decades. Also, NASA's Phoenix Lander mission in 2008 observed falling water-ice snow on northern Mars.

Hayne and six co-authors analyzed data gained by looking at clouds straight overhead and sideways with the Mars Climate Sounder, one of six instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This instrument records brightness in nine wavebands of visible and infrared light as a way to examine particles and gases in the Martian atmosphere. The analysis was conducted while Hayne was a post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

The data provide information about temperatures, particle sizes and their concentrations. The new analysis is based on data from observations in the south polar region during southern Mars winter in 2006-2007, identifying a tall carbon-dioxide cloud about 300 miles (500 kilometers) in diameter persisting over the pole and smaller, shorter-lived, lower-altitude carbon dioxide ice clouds at latitudes from 70 to 80 degrees south.

"One line of evidence for snow is that the carbon-dioxide ice particles in the clouds are large enough to fall to the ground during the lifespan of the clouds," co-author David Kass of JPL said. "Another comes from observations when the instrument is pointed toward the horizon, instead of down at the surface. The infrared spectra signature of the clouds viewed from this angle is clearly carbon-dioxide ice particles and they extend to the surface. By observing this way, the Mars Climate Sounder is able to distinguish the particles in the atmosphere from the dry ice on the surface."

Mars' south polar residual ice cap is the only place on the Red Planet where frozen carbon dioxide persists on the surface year-round. Just how the carbon dioxide from Mars' atmosphere gets deposited has been in question. It is unclear whether it occurs as snow or by freezing out at ground level as frost. These results show snowfall is especially vigorous on top of the residual cap.

"The finding of snowfall could mean that the type of deposition -- snow or frost -- is somehow linked to the year-to-year preservation of the residual cap," Hayne said.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, provided the Mars Climate Sounder instrument and manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro .

Subsurface lakes could be Mars lifesource, new study suggests

January 21, 2013, 3:15 p.m.

If Mars once contained life, it might have existed in watery oases far beneath the surface, according to a new study analyzing a deep Martian crater holding signs of an ancient lake.

The research, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, examined the 57-mile-wide McLaughlin Crater, which at 1.4 miles deep may have been low enough to allow underground water to well up into its bowl.

Though Mars looks like a dry, dusty planet, scientists believe the planet once held enough water that it left signs of streambeds on the surface. If Mars also held organic molecules like carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, it could have held locations suitable for life. NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed Aug. 5, is on a mission to search Mt. Sharp in Gale Crater for just such habitable environments.

But perhaps a better place to look for microbial life would be beneath the surface, said study leader Joseph Michalski, a planetary scientist at the National History Museum in London.

“There are a lot of people who think up to half of life on Earth exists as microbes in the subsurface of the planet,” Michalski pointed out.

Michalski’s team analyzed data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which revealed layers of rock at the crater’s bottom rich in clays and carbonate – materials that form in the presence of water.  The lake likely filled from the bottom, given that there don’t appear to be channels funneling down into the crater. However, smaller channels within the crater end about 500 meters from the bottom, a sign of a past water line, a geological bathtub ring.

Many scientists think that the sulfates detected on the surface could be a sign of water welling up from beneath the ground. But Michalski’s team argued that the sulfates could actually be indicative of a water-poor, highly acidic environment – hardly friendly to life as we know it.

Spots like McLaughlin Crater, on the other hand, are rich in clays and low in acidity — signs of a much more bio-friendly environment, he said. Such are the pockets where water (and perhaps life) could have existed, welling up from the beneath the dirt and leaving their mark on the surface, he said.

If there was a biosphere underneath the Martian terrain, the authors surmise, it would be in these rare spots of just-right conditions, rather than spread throughout the Red Planet’s crust. Deep craters rich in clays, he added, would be the right places to start looking.

“It’s perfectly reasonable,” said Norman Pace, a biochemist at the University of Colorado who was not involved in the study. “The next step is getting samples.”

Finding biological evidence on Mars, Michalski said, would help scientists on Earth who are trying to understand the origins of life. Earth has been through so much -- tectonic turmoil, erosion, recycling by later life on Earth -- that life's earliest history on our own planet is exceedingly difficult to trace.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is driving toward a flat rock called John Klein that offers pale veins that may hold clues to the wet history of the Red Planet.

Curiosity landed inside Mars' Gale Crater five months ago to investigate whether the planet ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life, primarily a search for the water that has now become ubiquitous.

According to NASA, “If the rock meets rover engineers' approval when Curiosity rolls up to it in coming days, it will become the first to be drilled for a sample during the Mars Science Laboratory mission.”

The drill cannot be directly controlled nor was there any apparatus built into the rover to hold the rock target still or prevent it from spinning or splintering while the impact drill does its thing.

"Drilling into a rock to collect a sample will be this mission's most challenging activity since the landing. It has never been done on Mars," said Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The drill hardware interacts energetically with Martian material we don't control. We won't be surprised if some steps in the process don't go exactly as planned the first time through."

Curiosity will first drill into the target rock to gather powdered samples from inside the rock that will be used to “scrub the drill,” then discarded. Once the engineers declare the drill operational the rover will drill and then transport the pellet-sized sample from the rock into one of several experiments to analyze its mineral and chemical composition. A test for hydrocarbon is also possible.

The area chosen for rock selection was nominated by Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) and other cameras because it revealed diverse unexpected features, including veins, nodules, cross-bedded layering, a lustrous pebble embedded in sandstone, and possibly some holes in the ground, according to NASA.

The rock chosen for drilling will be called "John Klein" in tribute to former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager John W. Klein, who died in 2011.

"John's leadership skill played a crucial role in making Curiosity a reality," said Cook.

The target is on flat-lying bedrock within a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay."

The terrain in this area differs from that of the landing site, a dry streambed and perfect microbial habitat about a third of a mile (about 500 meters) to the west. Curiosity's science team decided not to look for a drilling site at the streambed early in the mission and instead decided to look where orbital observations showed fractured ground that cools more slowly each night than nearby terrain types do.

"The orbital signal drew us here, but what we found when we arrived has been a great surprise," said Mars Science Laboratory project scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "This area had a different type of wet environment than the streambed where we landed, maybe a few different types of wet environments."

One line of evidence comes from inspection of light-toned veins with Curiosity's laser-pulsing Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, which found elevated levels of calcium, sulfur and hydrogen.

"These veins are likely composed of hydrated calcium sulfate, such as bassinite or gypsum," said ChemCam team member Nicolas Mangold of the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes in France. "On Earth, forming veins like these requires water circulating in fractures."

Researchers have used the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to examine sedimentary rocks in the area. Some are sandstone, with grains up to about peppercorn size. One grain has an interesting gleam and bud-like shape that have brought it Internet buzz as a "Martian flower." Other rocks nearby are siltstone, with grains finer than powdered sugar. These differ significantly from pebbly conglomerate rocks in the landing area.

"All of these are sedimentary rocks, telling us Mars had environments actively depositing material here," said MAHLI deputy principal investigator Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. "The different grain sizes tell us about different transport conditions."

Meteorite carries ancient water from Mars

Rock is among the oldest known from the planet and matches findings from NASA rovers.

·                     Ron Cowen 

A new meteorite resembles the rocks analysed by the Spirit rover at Mars's 90-kilometer-wide Gusev crater (centre in this artist's impression).

It may just look like your average rock, but in fact it's an extra-special delivery from the red planet. Laboratory analysis has revealed that a specimen bought from a Moroccan meteorite dealer in 2011 is the first sample of Martian origin that is similar to the water-rich rocks examined by NASA’s rovers.

The meteorite, dubbed Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, contains a concentration of water by weight about ten times higher than in any of the other 100 or so known Martian meteorites — those rare rocks that get ejected from the Martian surface into space when an asteroid hits the planet, and eventually find their way to Earth. It’s also the only known Martian sample on Earth that hails from a critical period, about 2 billion years ago, when Mars is thought to have become colder and drier than it was originally.

Carl Agee of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues report their findings from samples of the meteorite in Science online today¹.

Water clues

“Agee and his collaborators have thrown open the door to a whole new part of Mars,” says planetary scientist Munir Humayun at Florida State University in Tallahassee, who was not involved in the study. The meteorite, he adds, is “the first of a new class of Martian meteorites that provides more direct clues to the surface history of Mars.”

Moreover, Humayun says, NWA 7034 may provide the only direct corroboration for the rovers’ observations for some time to come, as the fate of a long-delayed mission to bring samples of Mars back to Earth is still uncertain.

The rock, found in the Sahara Desert, has a higher water content than any Martian meteorite previously analysed.

Carl Agee

The elemental composition of the meteorite strongly resembles that of rocks examined in 2005 by NASA’s Spirit rover at Gusev Crater². Those rocks showed evidence of chemical alteration by interactions with liquid water, notes Agee. The composition of NWA 7034 also matches that of rocks studied by Curiosity, NASA’s newest rover, as described in preliminary reports from members of that mission.

Missing link

Dating from 2.1 billion years ago, NWA 7034 is the second-oldest Martian meteorite, and provides a "missing link" in the planet’s geological record, according to Agee. (The oldest prospective Martian meteorite, ALH 84001, is 4.5 billion years old, whereas all other Martian meteorites are 1.3 billion years old or younger.) Several lines of evidence indicate that parts of Mars were warmer and wetter, and therefore a possible haven for carbon-based life, some 4 billion years ago. The relatively high water content of NWA 7034, which could be as much as 0.6% by weight, suggests that “crustal or surface processes involving water may have lasted” well beyond the 4-billion-year mark, Agee adds.

Related stories

·                                 Dreams of water on Mars evaporate

·                                 Mars rover finds conditions 'more conducive to life'

·                                 Special: Curiosity

That is not a surprise, given the map of hydrogen (a stand-in for water) generated by an instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiting spacecraft and the presence of small amounts of water in younger Martian meteorites, notes Harry McSween at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The meteorite is made of volcanic rock, and the presence of water in it suggests that crustal rocks on Mars interacted with surface water that was delivered by volcanic activity, near-surface reservoirs or by impacting comets, Agee says. But Jeffrey Taylor of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu says that whether that water content truly reveals an abundance of surface water on Mars 2.1 billion years ago awaits further study.

Journal name:

Nature

DOI:

doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12145

Soil ‘cocktail’ suggests Viking found life on Mars

“To paraphrase an old saying, if it looks like a microbe and acts like a microbe, then it probably is a microbe,” says Joseph Miller. “The presence of circadian rhythmicity and a high degree of mathematical complexity most likely means Viking discovered microbial life on Mars over 35 years ago." (Credit: "Mars surface material" by NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

USC (US) — Mathematical analysis of soil from Mars indicates there may be life on the planet.

In 1976, the National Aeronautical Space Agency launched the Viking program, sending space probes to Mars to determine whether there was life on the red planet. Thirty-six years later the debate about life on Mars is not over.

Joseph D. Miller, associate professor of cell and neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) and colleagues conducted an independent analysis of the labeled release (LR) data from the Viking 1 and 2.

Straight from the Source

Read the original study

The researchers applied mathematical measures of complexity to the data, which indicate a high degree of order that is more characteristic of a biological rather than a non-biological, purely physical process.

The research was published online in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

In the experiments, the Viking landers dropped on Mars about 4,000 miles apart, scooped up soil samples and applied a radiolabeled nutrient cocktail to the soil. If microbes were present in the soil, they would likely metabolize the nutrient resulting in the release of CO2 or possibly methane (CH4).

The active experiments did indicate metabolism, and control experiments on sterilized soil samples produced little or no gas release. But due to lack of support from two other Viking experiments that did not find any organic molecules in the soil, most scientists believed the data had been compromised by a non-biological oxidizing property of Mars soil.

Miller and colleagues did not accept this interpretation, and over the last six years applied measures of mathematical complexity to the data from active and control Viking data, as well as terrestrial biological and non-biological data sets.

Not only did the active Viking LR experiments exhibit higher complexity than the control experiments, but the active experiments clearly sorted with terrestrial biological data series whereas the Viking LR control data sorted with known terrestrial non-biological data.

“To paraphrase an old saying, if it looks like a microbe and acts like a microbe, then it probably is a microbe,” says Miller, who is a neuropharmacologist, but also studies circadian rhythms at USC and is an author on the research.

“The presence of circadian rhythmicity and a high degree of mathematical complexity or order in the LR data most likely means Viking discovered microbial life on Mars over 35 years ago.”

Without a protective atmosphere similar to Earth’s, life on Mars is more likely to exist underground, where it is safe from ultraviolet radiation, Miller said. If life does exist on Mars, the knowledge could unlock secrets of life here on Earth.

“We have only one example of life in the universe — we are it,” says Miller. “Finding another example of life somewhere else could be the biggest step forward in biology since the delineation of the genetic code by Crick and Watson.”

Though the research offers tantalizing proof, much more is needed. Miller thinks it’s time to send a probe back to Mars to make the definitive determination.

“This research is not a smoking gun,” he says. “A smoking gun would be taking a picture under a microscope of Mars bacteria. But the case is getting stronger. We know there is sub-surface water ice, and perhaps liquid water in regions that seem to release methane gas into the atmosphere.

“Water is necessary for life and methane is a potential signature of biology. There’s enough circumstantial evidence that strongly suggests NASA or the European Space Agency should consider explicit life detection experiments on Mars.”

Joining Miller in the new research is Viking principal investigator Gilbert V. Levin, adjunct professor, Arizona State University, Giorgio Bianciardi, researcher in human pathology and oncology at University of Siena, Italy, and Patricia A. Straat, co-investigator on the Viking LR studies (retired).

More news from USC: http://uscnews.usc.edu/

Scientists show that microbes from Earth can survive conditions found on Mars

 George Dvorsky

 Astrobiologists have been worried for quite some time now that the Martian surface has been contaminated with microbes originating from Earth — what got there by clinging to all the various probes and artifacts we've sent there. But given how severe the conditions are on Mars, it has been generally assumed that this is likely an impossibility.

A recent study now threatens to overturn this sentiment. Researchers from Russia and the U.S. have demonstrated that a hardy bacterium found in Siberia is in fact capable of surviving Mars-like conditions — a revelation that will have profound implications on how we prepare our Mars-bound artifacts for future missions.

Extracting Samples

To conduct the study, researchers from the University of Florida and the Russian Academy of sciences extracted various strains of bacteria found in the Siberian permafrost off the banks of the Kolyma River — extremophiles that can survive some of the harshest conditions that Earth has to offer. The samples were taken from a depth of 12 to 20 meters (40 to 65 feet) where the soil has an average temperature of -7 °C (19 °F).

Full size The samples were drilled out directly from the depth of the permafrost, and without fluid (which normally serves as lubrication) to avoid any contamination. The microbes that were taken had endured their conditions deep underground for the past 6,000 to 8,000 years.

The team, which consisted of Wayne Nicholson, Kirill Krivushin, David Gilichinsky and Andrew Schuerger, then grew larger cultures of these microbes back at the lab at normal temperatures in preparation for the next phase.

Hardy Survivors

The researchers took these cultures and exposed them to similar conditions found on Mars, including a severe lack of oxygen, extreme cold temperatures, and very low pressure (about 150 times lower than the Earth's, about 7 millibars). The experiment was run over the period of 30 days. Over 10,000 isolates were exposed to these conditions — and they all died.

Except six.

 And in fact, these six surviving microbes actually did better under these conditions. Surprised by the result, the researchers took a closer look at the survivors, and following a genetic analysis concluded that they all came from the same genus: an extremely hardy extremophile called Carnobacterium.

Carnobacterium can be found in cold climates around the world, including Alaska and the oxygen-poor waters of Ace Lake in Antarctica.

Mars Contaminated?

Indeed, it's a startlingly common anaerobic organism that doesn't require oxygen for growth. And in fact, a species of Carnobacterium (CB1) is used as a food additive for vacuum or modified atmosphere-packaged ready-to-eat and processed meats. In other words, it's the kind of bacterium that could easily make its way onto a probe bound for the Martian surface.

Full size As the researchers note in their study, "the ability of terrestrial microorganisms to grow in the near-surface environment of Mars is of importance to the search for life and protection of that planet from forward contamination by human and robotic exploration." Moving forward, and despite the fact that Mars has a highly irradiated surface, scientists will now have to ensure complete sterilization of all artifacts bound for the Martian surface.

The study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

NASA Announces Robust Multi-Year Mars Program; New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions

WASHINGTON -- Building on the success of Curiosity's Red Planet landing, NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. This announcement affirms the agency's commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation's scientific and human exploration objectives.

"The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s."

The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA's 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.

The plan to design and build a new Mars robotic science rover with a launch in 2020 comes only months after the agency announced InSight, which will launch in 2016, bringing a total of seven NASA missions operating or being planned to study and explore our Earth-like neighbor.

The 2020 mission will constitute another step toward being responsive to high-priority science goals and the president's challenge of sending humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s.

The future rover development and design will be based on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) architecture that successfully carried the Curiosity rover to the Martian surface this summer. This will ensure mission costs and risks are as low as possible, while still delivering a highly capable rover with a proven landing system. The mission will constitute a vital component of a broad portfolio of Mars exploration missions in development for the coming decade.

The mission will advance the science priorities of the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey and responds to the findings of the Mars Program Planning Group established earlier this year to assist NASA in restructuring its Mars Exploration Program.

"The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation," NASA's associate administrator for science, and astronaut John Grunsfeld said. "This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity."

The specific payload and science instruments for the 2020 mission will be openly competed, following the Science Mission Directorate's established processes for instrument selection. This process will begin with the establishment of a science definition team that will be tasked to outline the scientific objectives for the mission.

This mission fits within the five-year budget plan in the president's Fiscal Year 2013 budget request, and is contingent on future appropriations.

Plans also will include opportunities for infusing new capabilities developed through investments by NASA's Space Technology Program, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and contributions from international partners.

For information about NASA Mars activities, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

Lets look for life, amino acids and chirality

Contest opens for next Mars Rover Science Package

At the American Geophysical Union 2012 convention in San Francisco today, NASA’s associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld revealed the agency’s plans for another Mars mission. Slated to land in 2020, it will be a rover based on the same design as Mars Science Laboratory. Estimated cost of the mission was announced to be $1.5 billion.

This news brought mixed reactions from many of those in attendance as well as followers online, as while more exploration of the Red Planet is certainly an exciting concept, we have all heard — and seen — countless tales of budget cuts and funding problems throughout NASA over recent years, and many proposed missions and collaborations have had to be shelved or cut short due to lack of funds (remember ExoMars?) Even though the budget for this mission is supposedly “not being taken from other areas,” it’s clearly not going to them either. It will be interesting to see how this plays out across the agency.

Building on the success of Curiosity’s Red Planet landing, NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. This announcement affirms the agency’s commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation’s scientific and human exploration objectives.

“The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “With this next mission, we’re ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s.”

The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA’s 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing “Electra” telecommunication radios to ESA’s 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.

The plan to design and build a new Mars robotic science rover with a launch in 2020 comes only months after the agency announced InSight, which will launch in 2016, bringing a total of seven NASA missions operating or being planned to study and explore our Earth-like neighbor.

The 2020 mission will constitute another step toward being responsive to high-priority science goals and the president’s challenge of sending humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s.

The future rover development and design will be based on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) architecture that successfully carried the Curiosity rover to the Martian surface this summer. This will ensure mission costs and risks are as low as possible, while still delivering a highly capable rover with a proven landing system. The mission will constitute a vital component of a broad portfolio of Mars exploration missions in development for the coming decade.

The mission will advance the science priorities of the National Research Council’s 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey and responds to the findings of the Mars Program Planning Group established earlier this year to assist NASA in restructuring its Mars Exploration Program.

“The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation,” Grunsfeld said. “This mission concept fits within current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity.”

The specific payload and science instruments for the 2020 mission will be openly competed, following the Science Mission Directorate’s established processes for instrument selection. This process will begin with the establishment of a science definition team that will be tasked to outline the scientific objectives for the mission.

This mission fits within the five-year budget plan in the president’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget request, and is contingent on future appropriations.

Plans also will include opportunities for infusing new capabilities developed through investments by NASA’s Space Technology Program, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and contributions from international partners.

________________________

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/98813/nasa-reveals-plans-for-new-mars-rover/#ixzz2ECHCfZ2J

Curiosity result could confirm Mars life, says Levin

18:21 23 November 2012 by David Chandler

New Scientist

As space fans anticipate news of organic molecules from the Mars Curiosity rover – cryptically teased by the mission's chief scientist, John Grotzinger, in a US radio interview – there's one man who is even more excited than most.

Former NASA researcher Gilbert Levin says that a positive sign of organics by Curiosity would confirm his claim that NASA has already seen evidence for life on Mars – from an experiment called Labeled Release that went to the Red Planet aboard the Viking mission.

If Curiosity has found evidence for organics, as many are hoping, "that removes the last barrier to my interpretation of the Labeled Release results, and leaves us free and clear", Levin told New Scientist.

Though the prospect of new Curiosity findings have set the internet abuzz, nobody from NASA has yet said publicly what they are: Grotzinger has refused to elaborate, pointing New Scientist, and other journalists, to a presentation scheduled for the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, which begins on 3 December.

'History books'

Grotzinger's key comment to US National Public Radio – "this data is going to be one for the history books. It's looking really good" – concerned an instrument called SAM, for sample analysis at Mars, which, among other things, is tasked with finding organic molecules in the Martian soil.

Ordinarily, finding organics on the surface would not count as evidence for life, nor would it be surprising, since such molecules are constantly raining down throughout the solar system in meteorites. But in the case of Mars, it's more complicated, says Levin.

That's because the failure to detect any organics at all by an instrument aboard the Viking lander was the counter-evidence that cancelled out an apparent detection of active biology by Levin's Labeled Release experiment. That experiment showed that radioactively labelled carbon from a nutrient solution added to the soil was released into the air in the test chamber – an apparent sign of metabolism.

Though Levin has long argued otherwise, the consensus has been that Viking did not find evidence of life on Mars.

Caution urged

Levin acknowledges that, after more than three decades of argument over what the Viking results really mean, opinions are not likely to change overnight, no matter what the new Curiosity results may show. Although proving the presence of organics in the soil will "remove all rationale against" his interpretation, he says, "it's hard to change a paradigm". Most scientists are convinced that Viking's results were inconclusive. "I doubt this will change the consensus" he adds.

Chris McKay of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, is a leading researcher on the possibility of life on Mars, and he, too, urges caution. "This is probably not as exciting as the internet rumors suggest," he says – as someone who is privy to what Curiosity has found.

Then again, McKay was never convinced that Viking failed to find organics. He has argued, in a peer-reviewed paper, that the Viking non-detection of organics was invalid, by demonstrating that soils from the Atacama desert in Chile, known to contain organics, showed no signs of them in a test that replicated the one on Viking.

Big News From Mars?

Rover Scientists Mum For Now

Originally published on Tue November 20, 2012 7:59 am

Enlarge image

Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

 

(Hint: can you say organic?)

 

 

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.

 

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."

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.

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.

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.

"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?' "

News and Events

Curiosity Rover Finds Rock Type That’s Never Been Seen on Mars

• By Adam MannEmail Author
• October 11, 2012 | 
• 4:30 pm | 
• Categories: Space
• Edit

The rock named Jake Matijevic that Curiosity explored for several days on Mars. Red dots indicate areas where the rover shot the rock with laser blasts while purple circles indicate areas investigated with X-rays beams. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

After shooting it with lasers and X-rays, NASA’s Curiosity rover has determined that a rock nicknamed “Jake Matijevic” is of a variety that no other rover has ever spotted on Mars.

More Curiosity Coverage

Curiosity Close-Ups: The Rover’s Detailed Photoshoot of Itself

Curiosity Rover’s Self-Portraits Transport You to Mars

The rock, a highly fractionated alkalic rock type, is relatively well known to geologists since it is common in rift zones on Earth, such as volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands.

“This is a rock type which had not been seen before” by previous Mars rovers including Spirit and Opportunity, said Roger Weins, principle investigator for Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument, during a NASA press conference Oct. 11. It forms under relatively high pressure and often in the presence of water. While Curiosity is mostly focused on sedimentary rocks that could indicate the presence of past conditions for life, Matijevic is an igneous rock that likely formed about 5 miles under the Martian surface.

The rover had been investigating Matijevic mostly as an early test of the instruments on its arm, such as the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), which bombards a sample with X-rays to determine its chemical composition. Curiosity also used its ChemCam instrument to shoot the rock with more than 400 laser blasts, vaporizing microscopic amounts and then analyzing the resulting dust and plasma. This investigation showed that the rock contained a lot of elements such as silicon, aluminium, sodium, and potassium.

“This was surprising because it differed from the composition from what we know of rocks on Mars,” said Edward Stolper, Curiosity science team co-investigator, during the conference.

Scientists think this rock formed in the interior of Mars when magma moved up through cooler rock. As the magma cooled, elements including nickel, iron, and magnesium crystallized out of it first, leaving behind a material rich in silicon, aluminum, sodium, and potassium, as well as a higher fraction of dissolved water. Though the rock was unusual, the Curiosity team was careful to point out that it was just one isolated sample and not to extrapolate too much about early Martian geology based on it.

Engineers also discussed the case of the mysterious plastic object that Curiosity had spotted several days ago while scooping bits of Martian soil. They concluded that it is likely a bit of bonding material that fell off the rover or a piece of tubing that came off the descent stage and was recently blown off the probe. In either case, “it’s completely inconsequential to the rover’s function” and no further pieces have been seen, said engineer Chris Roumeliotis, the lead turret rover planner. Curiosity is continuing to go through its Martian dust rinse and repeat cycle to clean out its sample delivery instrument of any left-over contaminants from Earth.

Early Mars Maybe Not So Wet

New study could impact the odds that life had a chance to take hold on the Red Planet.

By Irene Klotz
Sun Sep 9, 2012 01:00 PM ET
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In 2008, NASA's Phoenix Mars lander landed in the Martian arctic region and uncovered evidence for water ice. Click to enlarge this image.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz.

Early Mars may not have been as warm or wet as scientists suspect, a finding which could impact the likelihood that the Red Planet was capable of evolving life at the time when it was getting started on Earth.

A new study presents an alternative explanation for the prevalence of Mars' ancient clay minerals, which on Earth most often result from water chemically reacting with rock over long periods of time. The process is believed to be a starting point for life.

The clays, also known as phyllosilocates, are among the strongest pieces of evidence for a Mars that once was warmer, wetter and much more like Earth than the cold, dry, acidic desert which appears today.

PHOTOS: Alien Robots That Left Their Mark on Mars

Data collected by orbiting spacecraft show Mars' clay minerals may instead trace their origin to water-rich volcanic magma, similar to how clays formed on the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia and in the Parana basin in Brazil. That process doesn't need standing bodies of liquid water.

"The infrared spectra we got in the lab (on Mururoa clays) using a reflected beam are astonishingly similar to that obtained on Mars by the orbiters," lead researcher Alain Meunier, with the University of Poitiers in France, wrote in an email to Discovery News.

The team also points out that some of the Mars meteorites recovered on Earth do not have a chemistry history that supports standing liquid water.

PHOTOS: Weirdest Mars Craters

But even if Mars was not as warm or wet as scientists have theorized, that doesn't close the door on the possibility of life.

WATCH VIDEO: WHY IS MARS RED?

The clays, for example, could have still hosted the early chemical reactions for life, even if they did not themselves form from standing bodies of water.

"On Earth, we think clay minerals were pretty important in the origin of life because the structure of them and the water they hold and the elements that are within them seem to be good things to develop RNA and we get to DNA from that," planetary scientist Brian Hynek, with the University of Colorado at Boulder, told Discovery News.

"Since we find clays all over Mars from the same time period, it's been thought that these are important for the question of habitability, and they certainly are. But the clays are just one piece of the puzzle," he said.

BIG PIC: Curiosity Surveys a Martian 'Mojave Desert'

For example, the fingerprints of water have been found in other minerals on Mars, though that water seems to have been more acidic.

"That's a challenge for life, but we certainly have a lot of examples of life living in very acidic places on Earth," Hynek said.

The first direct measurements of clay minerals on Mars are expected soon. NASA's Opportunity rover is making its way to suspected clays on the rim of a crater, while on the other side of the planet the roving chemistry lab Curiosity is beginning a two-year mission that will head to Martian clays near the foot of a mountain next year.

The research appears in this week's Nature Geoscience.