- 4441 - MARS - Curiosity, Ingenuity helicopter, Perseverance? There was no intelligent life, but there may have been simple life in those lakes. Once we get Comet Geyser and the other samples back to Earth, we may find out for sure.
------------------------- 4441 - MARS - Curiosity, Ingenuity helicopter, Perseverance
- NASA’s “Curiosity” has been working its way
up Mt. Sharp, the dominant central feature in Gale Crater on Mars. Now, almost
12 years into its mission, the capable rover has reached an interesting feature
that could tell them more about Mars and its watery history. It’s called the
Gediz Vallis channel.
-
- Gediz Vallis channel appears to have been
carved by ancient water. But if that’s the case, it happened billions of years
ago. The channel has since filled with rock.
Mt. Sharp’s upper regions are beyond Curiosity’s reach. It’s simply too
difficult for the rover to get there.
-
- But Nature is playing nice with “MSL
Curiosity”. Rocks have come tumbling
down from the mountain, creating a ridge and filling up a channel. Those rocks
are within reach, and they could hold clues to Mars’ watery past.
-
- Mars’ ancient history, especially as it
concerns surface liquid water, is a gigantic puzzle with lots of pieces. We
know there are hydrated minerals on Mars that date back millions of years. We
know there are sulphates, which are minerals left behind when water evaporates.
We have orbiter images clearly showing river channels and deltas.
-
- Understanding Gediz Vallis and what it
could tell us begins with Mt. Sharp. Mt. Sharp was built up over long periods
of geological time by the deposit of sediments into layers. Over time, some of
this material was eroded away, presenting us with what we see today. The Gediz
Vallis channel formed after all that had happened.
-
- Because the channel has steep walls,
scientists say water had to carve it. Wind erosion is ruled out because it
creates shallow, wide walls. Sometime after it formed, it was filled with rocky
debris. That debris probably came from high up Mt. Sharp, beyond Curiosity’s
reach. The rock will give the rover a look at the upper reaches of the mountain
that it would otherwise never obtain.
-
- Other evidence Curiosity has found of water
seems to have come and gone in phases, confounding our attempts to understand
Mars’ history. A year ago, the rover
ascended the Gediz Vallis ridge, a sprawling debris pile that appears to grow
out of the end of the channel, to get a closer look. Since the debris looks
like it flows out of the channel, it indicates that both are results of the
same geological process.
-
- Even though MSL Curiosity is an engineering
marvel, the rover will still need months to study the Gediz Vallis Channel.
What it uncovers over the following months could give scientists a lot more
detail about the history of Mars’ water.
-
- Curiosity’s data also shows that Mars had
episodes of water and that it didn’t all disappear at once. That research
showed that the bulk of Mt. Sharp was formed by waterborne sediments and that
after that happened, another layer made of windborne sediments formed on top of
it. But images of the windborne layer show that the sedimentary rock is
deformed by the later presence of water.
-
- How Gediz Vallis fits into Mars’ story is
unclear. But getting a closer look will start to untangle the planet’s complex
history. Was the channel carved by water? If Curiosity can confirm that, then
it’s more evidence that Mars had surface water more recently than thought. Did
water carry the boulders and debris that filled it, or did dry avalanches?
-
- NASA's stranded “Ingenuity Mars Helicopter”
has beamed back its final signal to Earth from the Red Planet, which included a
farewell message for mission scientists. It will continue collecting data on
Mars until it dies but will not transmit this data to Earth.
-
- Ingenuity has flown 72 times on Mars. It was
only initially expected to make five trips on the Red Planet. The Mars
Helicopter has beamed back its final message to Earth, which included a
heart-warming goodbye to mission scientists. The record-breaking robot will now
spend the rest of its days collecting data that could be used in future Mars
missions, but, only if future robots or astronauts go all the way to the Red
Planet to get it.
-
- The pigeon-size helicopter, or rotorcraft,
first landed on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021, alongside the Perseverance
rover, and it successfully completed the first-ever powered flight on an alien
world on April 19 of the same year.
-
- The Ingenuity mission's initial goal was to
fly five missions across 30 days. But the tiny chopper ended up flying 72 times
on Mars, spending more than two hours in the air and traveling 14 times farther
than initially planned.
-
- However, during what turned out to be its
final flight on January 18, the flying robot crash-landed after briefly losing
contact with NASA controllers. The helicopter only dropped from around 3 feet
above the ground, but it sustained irreversible damage to two of its four rotor
blades, with part of one blade later spotted on the ground near the chopper. As
a result, the mission officially ended on January 25.
-
- On April 16, Ingenuity beamed back its
final signal to Earth, which included the remaining data it had stored in its
memory bank and information about its final flight. In addition to the remaining data files,
Ingenuity sent the team a goodbye message including the names of all the people
who worked on the mission. This special message had been sent to Perseverance
the day before and relayed to Ingenuity to send home.
-
- The helicopter, which still has power, will
now spend the rest of its days collecting data from its final landing spot in
Valinor Hills. The chopper will wake up
daily to test its equipment, collect a temperature reading and take a single
photo of its surroundings. It will continue to do this until it loses power or
fills up its remaining memory space, which could take 20 years.
-
- Such a long-term dataset could not only
benefit future designs for Martian vehicles but also provide a long-term
perspective on Martian weather patterns and dust movement. The data will be kept on board the
helicopter and not beamed back to Earth, so it must be retrieved by future
Martian vehicles or astronauts.
-
- Ingenuity is almost unbelievable that after
over 1,000 Martian days on the surface, 72 flights, and one rough landing, not only did Ingenuity overachieve beyond our
wildest dreams, but also it may teach us new lessons in the years to come.
-
- Perseverance finds its Dream Rock. If there’s a Holy Grail on Mars, it’s
probably a specific type of rock: A rock so important that it holds convincing
clues to Mars’ ancient habitability. If
scientists could design the perfect rock for Perseverance to find, it would be
one that displayed evidence of ancient water and was the type that preserves
ancient organic material.
-
- The rover may have found it as it explores
the Margin Unit, a geologic region on the inner edge of Jezero Crater’s rim.
The Margin Unit was one of the reasons Jezero Crater was selected for
Perseverance.
-
- The “Margin Unit” is in a narrow band along
the crater’s western rim. Orbital observations showed that it’s one of the most
carbonate-rich regions on the planet. “Its presence, along with the adjacent
fluvial delta, made Jezero crater the most compelling landing site.
-
- The decision to send Perseverance to the
Jezero Crater and the Margin Unit seems to be paying off. Bunsen Peak caught
scientists’ attention because it stands tall compared to its surroundings. One
of the rock’s faces also has an interesting texture. Scientists thought the
rock would allow for nice cross-sections, and since it stood vertically,
there’d be less dust when working on it. Surface dust is a problem for
Perseverance because it can obscure the rock’s chemistry.
-
- The Perseverance team decided to sample it
and cache the sample along with the rest of its cores for eventual return to
Earth. But first, they scanned the rock’s surface with SuperCam and PIXL, the
rover’s spectrometers. Then, they abraded the rock’s surface and scanned it
again. The results show that Bunsen Peak is 75% carbonate grains cemented
together by nearly pure silica.
-
- Nearly all the minerals in the rock we just
sampled were made in water; on Earth, water-deposited minerals are often good
at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures. The rock
can even tell us about Mars’s climate conditions that were present when it was
formed.
-
- Here on our planet, carbonate minerals can
form directly around microbe cells. Once encapsulated, the cells can quickly
become fossils, and are preserved for a long time. This is what happened to
stromatolites here on Earth, and they now constitute some of the earliest
evidence of life on our planet.
-
- These minerals are a high priority for
return to Earth. This sample is number 24, named Comet Geyser, because
everything gets a name when you intend to transport it to Earth from another
planet.
-
- There’s something specific that makes this
sample even more intriguing. They’r microcrystalline rocks, meaning they’re
made of crystals so small that only microscopes can see them. On Earth,
microcrystalline rocks like Precambrian chert hold fossilized cyano-bacteria.
Could the same be true of Bunsen Peak?
-
- The silica and parts of the carbonate
appear microcrystalline, which makes them extremely good at trapping and
preserving signs of microbial life that might have once lived in this
environment.
-
- Comet Geyser is Perseverance’s third sample
from the Margin Unit. There’s still more work to do, but the samples support
what scientists thought about Jezero Crater before Perseverance landed there:
it was once a paleolake.
-
- There was no intelligent life, but there may
have been simple life in those lakes. Once we get Comet Geyser and the other
samples back to Earth, we may find out for sure.
-
-
April 24, 2023 MARS - Curiosity,
Ingenuity helicopter, Perseverance 4441
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------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Wednesday, April 24,
2024
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