- 4101 - LIFE ON MARS? - The search for life on Mars has been a long a confusing one. Inconclusive experiments abound, but one thing is certain, there is definitely “organic” material on the Red Planet.
-------------- 4101 - LIFE ON MARS?
- “Viking”, one of the
early landers on the Red Planet back in the 1970s, had an experimental result
that puzzled scientists at the time. A
few chemicals made it look like the sensor had been contaminated with cleaning
fluids. It wasn’t until decades later, in 2008, that the Phoenix lander found
“perchlorate” in the Martian regolith that it became clear that the Viking
lander hadn’t detected cleaning materials.
It had seen organic material that had been reacting with perchlorate in
its sample.
-
- “Phoenix” also directly
measured organics in the Martian soil, notably methane, one of Earth’s most
common organic materials. “Curiosity” also contributed with a clear detection
of organics in 2012. But more recently, another, more capable rover arrived on
the scene.
-
- “Perseverance” landed
on Mars in 2021 and has served as the basis for much of the ongoing burst of
research about the planet. “SHERLOC” ,
the name of the research instrument,
scans a target from about 2 inches away using techniques, deep
ultraviolet Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy, which can help differentiate
types of organic materials in the object being scanned
-
- Signs appeared in
SHERLOC’s data that were “consistent with molecules linked to aqueous
processes”. Some organic materials
that SHERLOC collected data on were created underwater.
-
- That might not come as a
big surprise, given that Jezero Crater, Perseverance’s landing spot, was
specifically selected as it was thought to be a dried-up lake bed.
-
- This does not mean that
Martian life created these organic compounds. Plenty of geochemical processes
can do so, and the general consensus of Perseverance’s scientific teams is that
all the organic signatures they have seen so far can be attributed to creation
by non-biological processes.
-
- But, we are just now
scratching the surface of the organic carbon story on Mars. Despite 50 years of
data collection, most of that story still needs to be written. And, despite
some recent setbacks in the development of the Mars Sample Return,
Perseverance’s follow-up mission, there will be plenty of other opportunities
to study these compounds on the Red Planet in the future.
-
-
July 22, 2023 4101
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Monday, July 24, 2023
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