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#1500 by eeergo on 22 Mar, 2021 22:03
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#1501 by FutureSpaceTourist on 06 Apr, 2021 06:37
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twitter.com/we_martians/status/1379206882917720064Quote
One of our patrons found this NASA paper on Curiosity wheel damage.
It's a study on how the rover could shed part of a wheel against a rock in order to prevent it from mangling up and damaging cabling.
The pictures are wild.
https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/Arturo_Rankin/Rimmed_Wheel_Performance_on_the_Mars_Science_Laboratory_Scarecrow_Rover.pdf
https://twitter.com/rover_18/status/1379315275753922560QuoteNote that this test was an existence proof, not a systematic development. They showed that it is in fact possible to shed a detached inner rim after months of trial and error with immediate direct visual feedback. The singular success was not repeated.
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#1502 by eeergo on 26 May, 2021 11:38
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#1503 by Star One on 31 May, 2021 16:43
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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Shining Clouds on Mars
May 28, 2021
The science team is studying the clouds, which arrived earlier and formed higher than expected, to learn more about the Red Planet.
Cloudy days are rare in the thin, dry atmosphere of Mars. Clouds are typically found at the planet’s equator in the coldest time of year, when Mars is the farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. But one full Martian year ago – two Earth years – scientists noticed clouds forming over NASA’s Curiosity rover earlier than expected.
This year, they were ready to start documenting these “early” clouds from the moment they first appeared in late January. What resulted are images of wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, some of them shimmering with color. More than just spectacular displays, such images help scientists understand how clouds form on Mars and why these recent ones are different.
In fact, Curiosity’s team has already made one new discovery: The early-arrival clouds are actually at higher altitudes than is typical. Most Martian clouds hover no more than about 37 miles (60 kilometers) in the sky and are composed of water ice. But the clouds Curiosity has imaged are at a higher altitude, where it’s very cold, indicating that they are likely made of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice. Scientists look for subtle clues to establish a cloud’s altitude, and it will take more analysis to say for sure which of Curiosity’s recent images show water-ice clouds and which show dry-ice ones.
The fine, rippling structures of these clouds are easier to see with images from Curiosity’s black-and-white navigation cameras. But it’s the color images from the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, that really shine – literally. Viewed just after sunset, their ice crystals catch the fading light, causing them to appear to glow against the darkening sky. These twilight clouds, also known as “noctilucent” (Latin for “night shining”) clouds, grow brighter as they fill with crystals, then darken after the Sun’s position in the sky drops below their altitude. This is just one useful clue scientists use to determine how high they are.
Even more stunning are iridescent, or “mother of pearl” clouds. “If you see a cloud with a shimmery pastel set of colors in it, that’s because the cloud particles are all nearly identical in size,” said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “That’s usually happening just after the clouds have formed and have all grown at the same rate.”
These clouds are among the more colorful things on the Red Planet, he added. If you were skygazing next to Curiosity, you could see the colors with the naked eye, although they’d be faint.
“I always marvel at the colors that show up: reds and greens and blues and purples,” Lemmon said. “It’s really cool to see something shining with lots of color on Mars.”
For more about Curiosity, visit:
https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/
For more about NASA’s Mars program, visit:
https://mars.nasa.gov
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-curiosity-rover-captures-shining-clouds-on-mars -
#1504 by FutureSpaceTourist on 29 Jun, 2021 16:46
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/first-you-see-it-then-you-dont-scientists-closer-to-explaining-mars-methane-mysteryQuote
First You See It, Then You Don’t: Scientists Closer to Explaining Mars Methane Mystery
Jun 29, 2021
Why do some science instruments detect the gas on the Red Planet while others don’t?
Reports of methane detections at Mars have captivated scientists and non-scientists alike. On Earth, a significant amount of methane is produced by microbes that help most livestock digest plants. This digestion process ends with livestock exhaling or burping the gas into the air.
While there are no cattle, sheep, or goats on Mars, finding methane there is exciting because it may imply that microbes were, or are, living on the Red Planet. Methane could have nothing to do with microbes or any other biology, however; geological processes that involve the interaction of rocks, water, and heat can also produce it.
Before identifying the sources of methane on Mars, scientists must settle a question that’s been gnawing at them: Why do some instruments detect the gas while others don’t? NASA’s Curiosity rover, for instance, has repeatedly detected methane right above the surface of Gale Crater. But ESA’s (the European Space Agency) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter hasn’t detected any methane higher in the Martian atmosphere.
“When the Trace Gas Orbiter came on board in 2016, I was fully expecting the orbiter team to report that there’s a small amount of methane everywhere on Mars,” said Chris Webster, lead of the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) instrument in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) chemistry lab aboard the Curiosity rover.
The TLS has measured less than one-half part per billion in volume of methane on average in Gale Crater. That’s equivalent to about a pinch of salt diluted in an Olympic-size swimming pool. These measurements have been punctuated by baffling spikes of up to 20 parts per billion in volume.
“But when the European team announced that it saw no methane, I was definitely shocked,” said Webster, who’s based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The European orbiter was designed to be the gold standard for measuring methane and other gases over the whole planet. At the same time, Curiosity’s TLS is so precise, it will be used for early warning fire detection on the International Space Station and for tracking oxygen levels in astronaut suits. It’s also been licensed for use at power plants, on oil pipelines, and in fighter aircraft, where pilots can monitor the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in their face masks.
Still, Webster and the SAM team were jolted by the European orbiter findings and immediately set out to scrutinize the TLS measurements on Mars.
Some experts suggested that the rover itself was releasing the gas. “So we looked at correlations with the pointing of the rover, the ground, the crushing of rocks, the wheel degradation – you name it,” Webster said. “I cannot overstate the effort the team has put into looking at every little detail to make sure those measurements are correct, and they are.”
Webster and his team reported their results today in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.
As the SAM team worked to confirm its methane detections, another member of Curiosity’s science team, planetary scientist John E. Moores from York University in Toronto, published an intriguing prediction in 2019. “I took what some of my colleagues are calling a very Canadian view of this, in the sense that I asked the question: ‘What if Curiosity and the Trace Gas Orbiter are both right?’” Moores said.
Moores, as well as other Curiosity team members studying wind patterns in Gale Crater, hypothesized that the discrepancy between methane measurements comes down to the time of day they’re taken. Because it needs a lot of power, TLS operates mostly at night when no other Curiosity instruments are working. The Martian atmosphere is calm at night, Moores noted, so the methane seeping from the ground builds up near the surface where Curiosity can detect it.
The Trace Gas Orbiter, on the other hand, requires sunlight to pinpoint methane about 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, above the surface. “Any atmosphere near a planet’s surface goes through a cycle during the day,” Moores said. Heat from the Sun churns the atmosphere as warm air rises and cool air sinks. Thus, the methane that is confined near the surface at night is mixed into the broader atmosphere during the day, which dilutes it to undetectable levels. “So I realized no instrument, especially an orbiting one, would see anything,” Moores said.
Immediately, the Curiosity team decided to test Moores’ prediction by collecting the first high-precision daytime measurements. TLS measured methane consecutively over the course of one Martian day, bracketing one nighttime measurement with two daytime ones. With each experiment, SAM sucked in Martian air for two hours, continuously removing the carbon dioxide, which makes up 95% of the planet’s atmosphere. This left a concentrated sample of methane that TLS could easily measure by passing an infrared laser beam through it many times, one that’s tuned to use a precise wavelength of light that is absorbed by methane.
“John predicted that methane should effectively go down to zero during the day, and our two daytime measurements confirmed that,” said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of SAM, who’s based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. TLS’ nighttime measurement fit neatly within the average the team had already established. “So that’s one way of putting to bed this big discrepancy,” Mahaffy said.
While this study suggests that methane concentrations rise and fall throughout the day at the surface of Gale Crater, scientists have yet to solve the global methane puzzle at Mars. Methane is a stable molecule that is expected to last on Mars for about 300 years before getting torn apart by solar radiation. If methane is constantly seeping from all similar craters, which scientists suspect is likely given that Gale doesn’t seem to be geologically unique, enough of it should have accumulated in the atmosphere for the Trace Gas Orbiter to detect. Scientists suspect that something is destroying methane in less than 300 years.
Experiments are underway to test whether very low-level electric discharges induced by dust in the Martian atmosphere could destroy methane, or whether abundant oxygen at the Martian surface quickly destroys methane before it can reach the upper atmosphere.
“We need to determine whether there’s a faster destruction mechanism than normal to fully reconcile the data sets from the rover and the orbiter,” Webster said.
News Media Contact
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
[email protected]
Written by Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
2021-130 -
#1505 by Star One on 15 Jul, 2021 18:44
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Microbes burping methane on Mars may be right next to NASA rover
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2284210-microbes-burping-methane-on-mars-may-be-right-next-to-nasa-rover/ -
#1506 by Star One on 18 Jul, 2021 09:50
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Freely accessible article:
'Alien burp' may have been detected by NASA's Curiosity rover
https://www.livescience.com/curiosity-finds-alien-methane-source.html
Related paper:
Mars Methane Sources in Northwestern Gale Crater Inferred from Back-Trajectory Modeling
Abstract
During its five years of operation, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) on board the Curiosity rover has detected six methane spikes above a low background abundance in Gale crater. The methane spikes are likely the consequence of nearby surface emission. Here we use inverse Lagrangian modeling techniques to identify probable upstream emission regions for these methane spikes at an unprecedented spatial resolution. Inside Gale crater, the northwestern crater floor casts the strongest influence on the detections. Outside Gale crater, the emission region with the strongest influence extends towards the north. The contrasting results from two consecutive methane measurements point to an active emission region to the west and the southwest of the Curiosity rover on the northwestern crater floor. The observed spike magnitude and frequency also favor emission sites on the northwestern crater floor, unless fast methane removal mechanisms that are unknown to date are at work.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-569847/v1 -
#1507 by Dalhousie on 19 Jul, 2021 23:17
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Freely accessible article:
'Alien burp' may have been detected by NASA's Curiosity rover
https://www.livescience.com/curiosity-finds-alien-methane-source.html
Related paper:
Mars Methane Sources in Northwestern Gale Crater Inferred from Back-Trajectory Modeling
Abstract
During its five years of operation, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) on board the Curiosity rover has detected six methane spikes above a low background abundance in Gale crater. The methane spikes are likely the consequence of nearby surface emission. Here we use inverse Lagrangian modeling techniques to identify probable upstream emission regions for these methane spikes at an unprecedented spatial resolution. Inside Gale crater, the northwestern crater floor casts the strongest influence on the detections. Outside Gale crater, the emission region with the strongest influence extends towards the north. The contrasting results from two consecutive methane measurements point to an active emission region to the west and the southwest of the Curiosity rover on the northwestern crater floor. The observed spike magnitude and frequency also favor emission sites on the northwestern crater floor, unless fast methane removal mechanisms that are unknown to date are at work.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-569847/v1
This is a pre print.Any idea where it will be published? -
#1508 by Star One on 17 Aug, 2021 19:07
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Finds A Changing Landscape:
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#1509 by eeergo on 06 Sep, 2021 14:52
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#1510 by Star One on 03 Nov, 2021 17:01
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Organic molecules revealed in Mars’s Bagnold Dunes by Curiosity’s derivatization experiment
Abstract
The wet chemistry experiments on the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover were designed to facilitate gas chromatography mass spectrometry analyses of polar molecules such as amino acids and carboxylic acids. Here we present the results of such a successful wet chemistry experiment on Mars on sand scooped from the Bagnold Dunes with the N-methyl-N-(tert-butyldimethylsilyl) trifluoroacetamide derivatization agent. No amino-acid derivatives were detected. However, chemically derivatized benzoic acid and ammonia were detected. Mass spectra matching derivatized phosphoric acid and phenol were present, as were several nitrogen-bearing molecules and as yet unidentified high-molecular-weight compounds. The origin of these compounds, including those that may be internal to the Sample Analysis at Mars background, is examined. This derivatization experiment on Mars has expanded the inventory of molecules present in Martian samples and demonstrated a powerful tool to further enable the search for polar organic molecules of biotic or prebiotic relevance.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01507-9
Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-11-molecules-revealed-mars-curiosity-kind.html -
#1511 by eeergo on 18 Jan, 2022 15:26
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Some excitement about carbon-12-enriched samples having been detected by Curiosity on Gale surface highs is making the rounds. Apart from the much-hyped biological explanations everyone is jumping at, the possibility of the enrichment coming from UV-CO2 interactions (and a reducing early Martian atmosphere) is not ruled out and IMO much more likely. The cosmic coincidence of Mars passing through a typically 12C-enriched interstellar dust cloud is also plausible.
https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-rover-detects-carbon-signature-hints-past-life-source -
#1512 by Star One on 19 Jan, 2022 14:20
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Some excitement about carbon-12-enriched samples having been detected by Curiosity on Gale surface highs is making the rounds. Apart from the much-hyped biological explanations everyone is jumping at, the possibility of the enrichment coming from UV-CO2 interactions (and a reducing early Martian atmosphere) is not ruled out and IMO much more likely. The cosmic coincidence of Mars passing through a typically 12C-enriched interstellar dust cloud is also plausible.
On what basis do you conclude it’s much more likely, show your working as they say?
https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-rover-detects-carbon-signature-hints-past-life-source
After all reading the NASA press release as linked to below no one there appears to be offering one hypothesis as a preferable explanation over another at the moment.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-curiosity-rover-measures-intriguing-carbon-signature-on-mars -
#1513 by eeergo on 19 Jan, 2022 15:26
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Some excitement about carbon-12-enriched samples having been detected by Curiosity on Gale surface highs is making the rounds. Apart from the much-hyped biological explanations everyone is jumping at, the possibility of the enrichment coming from UV-CO2 interactions (and a reducing early Martian atmosphere) is not ruled out and IMO much more likely. The cosmic coincidence of Mars passing through a typically 12C-enriched interstellar dust cloud is also plausible.
On what basis do you conclude it’s much more likely, show your working as they say?
https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-rover-detects-carbon-signature-hints-past-life-source
After all reading the NASA press release as linked to below no one there appears to be offering one hypothesis as a preferable explanation over another at the moment.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-curiosity-rover-measures-intriguing-carbon-signature-on-mars
No work in my prior post: just a perception that possibility does not require as much wishful thinking (and anchoring on terrestrial precedent) as the biological one.
The NASA press release may be reasonably even-handed, even though the SAM PI is not too careful about statements like " we’re looking at what else could have caused the carbon signature we’re seeing, if not life", which should in my view phrased more carefully the other way around ("we're looking at what else apart from abiological mechanisms could be causing this carbon signature we're seeing, including life"), but it's certainly less even-handed than the paper: "All three of these scenarios are unconventional, unlike processes common on Earth".
In any case, and trying to dig a bit deeper: from reading the paper (https://www.pnas.org/content/119/4/e2115651119, I belive it's open access), interpretations involving biological processes that resemble those on Earth -which is already a strong caveat- imply either their combination with other abiotic explanations in order to reach the observed concentrations, or having isolated subsurface CO2 reservoirs. What's more, these processes mediated by life "require multiple steps with the CH4 consumed by the methanotrophs to be biological CH4 from microbial methanogenesis", in addition to an a-priori composition of the source CO2 more akin to magmatic rock carbon than that of the Martian atmosphere. So, a very fine-tuned set of unlikely hypothesis.
The molecular cloud model, even if dependent on a rare event, is much more solid by the paper's own admission. The abiotic photochemistry hypothesis from abundant CO2 likewise needs less fine-tuning or strong constraints, and both better explain the concurrent, but evidently less-hyped, depletion in 34S. -
#1514 by vjkane on 20 Jan, 2022 00:03
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What's more, these processes mediated by life "require multiple steps with the CH4 consumed by the methanotrophs to be biological CH4 from microbial methanogenesis", in addition to an a-priori composition of the source CO2 more akin to magmatic rock carbon than that of the Martian atmosphere. So, a very fine-tuned set of unlikely hypothesis.
Do those steps occur in terrestrial ecosystems or are supported by chemical analysis of very ancient geological chemistry on Earth? -
#1515 by eeergo on 20 Jan, 2022 09:00
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What's more, these processes mediated by life "require multiple steps with the CH4 consumed by the methanotrophs to be biological CH4 from microbial methanogenesis", in addition to an a-priori composition of the source CO2 more akin to magmatic rock carbon than that of the Martian atmosphere. So, a very fine-tuned set of unlikely hypothesis.
Do those steps occur in terrestrial ecosystems or are supported by chemical analysis of very ancient geological chemistry on Earth?
These in particular appear to come from current Earth analogues. -
#1516 by Blackstar on 24 Jan, 2022 18:04
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#1517 by Don2 on 28 Jan, 2022 21:48
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Sky and Telescope article on carbon isotope results at Gale Crater.
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/evidence-hints-at-ancient-life-on-mars/
Original paper:
https://www.pnas.org/content/119/4/e2115651119
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#1518 by yg1968 on 25 Feb, 2022 17:47
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#1519 by Rondaz on 01 Mar, 2022 14:17
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Astronomy18:07 01 March 2022Complexity 1.9 "Curiosity" found a stone bush on Mars..
18:07 01 March 2022
The Curiosity rover has found an unusual stone structure on the Red Planet that looks like a coral or bush. According to scientists, it was formed by the precipitation of minerals from an aqueous solution in the past and was previously included in the rock, according to the NASA website.
Curiosity began its work on Mars in 2012 as part of NASA 's Mars Science Laboratory mission to study the geology and atmosphere of the Red Planet. The main target of the rover was the five-kilometer Mount Sharp , located in the center of Gale Crater and covered with an array of eroded layers of sedimentary rocks .
On February 25, 2022, the MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) instrument, mounted on the end of the rover's robotic arm, took eight images of an unusual stone structure that looks like a coral or a bush no larger than a centimeter. This structure, according to scientists, does not have a biogenic origin, but is a concretion of minerals precipitated from an aqueous solution, which was previously in the rock. Subsequently, the rock was subjected to erosion processes, exposing the concretion. The rover found similar structures earlier, when they were formed by sulfates.
Curiosity has already made many discoveries, in particular, it was able to determine the age of rocks containing organic matter, proved the salinity of a disappeared ancient lake, discovered mud cracks left after the drying of streams, and helps to register mysterious bursts of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
Alexander Voytyuk
https://nplus1.ru/news/2022/03/01/mars-concretion