Washington: NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has found carbon-containing compounds in samples drilled out of an ancient rock, the first definitive detection of organics on the surface of Earth’s neighbor planet, scientists said on Tuesday.
The rover also found spurts of methane gas in the atmosphere, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life. Additional studies, which may be beyond the rover’s capabilities, are needed to determine if the organic compounds and/or the methane gas were produced by past or present life on Mars or if they stem from geochemical processes.
We have had a major discovery. We have found organics on Mars,” Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said during a webcast press conference at a science meeting in San Francisco.
Last week, scientists published research showing the crater was once filled with water, with sediments building up over time to form three-mile (5-km) high Mount Sharp, which rises from the basin’s floor.
The methane detections by Curiosity follow a series of observations by Earth-based telescopes and Mars-orbiting spacecraft that found mysterious but fleeting plumes of methane.
Because we are seeing signals here it’s worth coming back and doing more work,” Grotzinger added. The research was released at the American Geophysical Union conference. The methane study will be published in this week’s issue of the journal Science.
Bureau Report
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