NASA's billion dollar Curiosity rover may justy have found hat amounts to Martian food during its scientific activities on the Red Planet. This news comes shortly after the rover finally got up and running again after a series of computer problems that sent it into hibernation mode for the better part of a month. The latest discovery came out of the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
According to NASA, the rover found evidence for perchlorates, which are salts that can serve as both an energy source for potential Martian microorganisms and also a marker of past climate. The presence of perchlorates and can lead to the formation of liquid brines under current conditions on the planet. Perchlorates were first confirmed on Mars in 2008.
Speaking on the new findings, Doug Archer, a scientist with the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate of NASA's Johnson Space Center, is cautiously optimistic, stating that "we know of microbes on the Earth that actually use perchlorate as an energy source," later adding that “perchlorate makes organic detection very difficult because it releases a lot of oxygen."
Result: natural chemistry may serve as a false flag for life, which gives scientists all the more reason to be skeptical of any promising news.
For NASA, Curiosity represents the next generation of Mars rovers, serving as a successor to Spirit and Opportunity (landed 2004), which served as successors to Sojourner(landed 1997). Curiosity is due to land in August, 2012, during which it will attempt to discover whether Mars ever was home to/was once suitable for life. The 8 main objectives of the mission are as follows:
1. Determine the nature/amount of organic compounds
2. Identify the building blocks of life as we know it
3. Look for traces of past life
4. Investigate Martian geology
5. Discover how rocks/soils were formed
6. Assess atmospheric evolution
7. Try and understand the current water cycle
8. Identify the surface radiation from the Sun
In terms of what the rover has to offer, it is truly ambitious.
To start with, the rover will be powered nuclear, rather than solar energy like its predecessors, which means that Curiosity will be able to operate year-round. The rover will carry 3 cameras, a laser several spectrometers, a sampling tool, a radiation detector, atmospheric assessment tools, water detector, as well as navigation cameras designed to help the rover act autonomously by helping it avoid hazards on the Martian surface.
For NASA, there is a lot riding on Curiosity, far more tan the mission itself. For starters, Curiosity is set to be the last flagship missionfor the foreseeable future as these most ambitious missions, commonly costing over $1 billion, have been eliminated from NASA's future plans thanks to extensive budget cutsHowever, there is hope within NASA that a successful mission may spur the public to be more interested in planetary science. The hope: greater public support in planetary exploration will spur Congress to allocate more funding for NASA, which has seen its planetary science budget drastically cut for the 2013 fiscal year, and will, in all probability, have to make do with less in the foreseeable future.
For more info:
Space.com
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