- 3378 - MARS - and Moon, have we found organics? NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has discovered carbon-containing organic compounds in some of the rocks it investigated on the floor of the Red Planet's Jezero Crater. We can't count this as detection of life on Mars, but, we have found life's building blocks, since organics can be produced by both biological and non-biological means.
--------------------- 3378 - MARS - and Moon, have we found organics?
- The “PIXL” instrument got a good look at the abraded patch of a rock from the area nicknamed ‘South Séítah,’. The organic compounds were detected in the dust on non-abraded rock as well as the interiors of abraded rocks on the Jezero, which once contained a large lake and a river delta, using the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument.
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- The bedrock on which the Perseverance has been driving since landing in February was most likely formed by red-hot magma, and the team has stated that rocks in the crater have interacted with water several times over the eons and that some of them contain organic molecules.
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- This discovery has implications for understanding and precisely timing key events in the history of Jezero Crater and the Red Planet itself as a whole. At the same time, the preservation of organics inside ancient rocks has potential biosignatures (evidence of life, past or present) that might be preserved as well.
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- With scientists having just made a world-historic 2021, discovery on Mars by finding significant amounts of water inside Mars' grand canyon system, this is another intriguing addition to our ever-evolving Red Planet puzzle.
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- This is a question that may not be solved until the samples are returned to Earth, but the preservation of organics is very exciting. When these samples are returned to Earth, they will be a source of scientific inquiry and discovery for many years.
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- The only two space agencies in the world to land and successfully deploy robotic rovers on Mars, NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA), have no choice but to place their Red Planet vehicles on "safe mode," and shut down research.
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- The reason is undeniable: the sun is about to pass between the Earth and Mars in an event called a "Mars solar conjunction," which prevents all direct communications until the two planets regain line-of-sight positions once more.
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- While this will only last from October 2 to 16, 2021, it also raises concerns about maintaining communications with probes, or even crewed missions to the Red Planet, the outer planets, and beyond.
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- If NASA engineers attempt to signal its Mars rovers through the sun's ionizing rays, communications could become disrupted or even corrupted. Obviously, rovers like Perseverance require highly exacting commands to perform actions, and any corrupted signals could potentially cause them to take dangerous actions.
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- Consequently, NASA has elected to refrain from sending anything at all to its Mars rovers from October 2 to 16. For the same reasons, the CNSA told China's state-run Global Times that its Tianwen-1 space probe and Zhurong rover will enter safe mode, halting all scientific work until the Mars solar conjunction has passed.
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- Curiosity and Perseverance won't stop recording the Martian weather, but multiple onboard instruments will shut down. And the InSight lander will also keep listening for Marsquakes, while NASA's orbiting assets will relay messages to Earth whenever possible.
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- This isn't a solar flare or superflare ravaging the surface of the planet and frying all hardware and hypothetical life in or around the Red Planet. Put simply, the sun is in the way, which means we can't communicate clearly to anything on Mars for a few weeks.
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- If astronauts were already on the surface of Mars while this happened, they might be receiving detailed instructions from NASA for highly delicate procedures, and mistaken or corrupted instructions could, possibly, have deadly ramifications.
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- Even when routine instructions are heard loud and clear, faulty equipment or hardware could create an emergency, as was the case when Apollo 13 had "a problem." Mars solar conjunctions happen every two years, which means any four-year mission (the maximum time humans can remain exposed to radiation) will have at least one two-week period of little-to-no contact with Earth, and need to be 100% self-sufficient.
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- This could be circumvented with a relay satellite positioned between the Earth and Mars, perhaps one-quarter of the way back in the Earth's orbit like how satellites can transmit messages around the spherical Earth despite the planet blocking line-of-sight radio contact.
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- This entire problem is nothing compared to the vast distances between the stars. The closest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.5 light-years away. That means any signal to humans on some interstellar mission there would hear no reply until at least 9 years had passed. Luckily, signals to Mars take minutes, not years. But sending signals in space could pose serious challenges to the future of space travel.
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- Meanwhile back closer to home we are practicing the run-up to a human landing on the Moon under the “Artemis Program“. NASA has now finalized the landing site for its lunar rover “VIPER“. This is expected to be the first human landing after the Apollo 17 mission of 1972.
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- The “Artemis” program aims to send humans to the southern pole of the Moon, a territory uncharted by previous crewed missions or landers. The lunar south pole is one of the coldest regions of our solar system but one that has easy access to the Moon's water.
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- The 'Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover' or VIPER, in 2023, will be on a 100-day mission to explore resources that might facilitate a human settlement on the Moon.
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- Planned to be the size of a golf cart and weighing 950 pounds, VIPER will have three spectrometers and a 3.28 foot drill. Moving at an extremely slow speed of 0.5 mph, the rover will take samples from three types of lunar environments while battling temperature fluctuations within the range of 500°F, as it moves from shade to sunlight on the lunar surface.
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- The solar-powered rover will also need to stay away from extended periods of darkness that can abruptly end the mission. The “Nobile crater” offers a lot of flexibility. The crater is mostly covered in shadows making it an ideal site for ice, whereas smaller craters near the roving site will provide access to look for other resources too.
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- The Nobile crater covers an approximate surface area of 36 square miles, of which VIPER is expected to traverse 10 to 15 miles during its mission. As it moves through areas of scientific interest, it will drill and collect samples from at least three sites.
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- Stay tuned, there is still much more to learn.
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December 19, 2021 MARS - and Moon, have we found organics? 3378
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