Helicopter Could Be 'Scout' for Mars Rovers

Enter the Mars Helicopter, a proposed add-on to Mars rovers of the future that could potentially triple the distance these vehicles currently drive in a Martian day, and deliver a new level of visual information for choosing which sites to explore.

The helicopter would fly ahead of the rover almost every day, checking out various possible points of interest and helping engineers back on Earth plan the best driving route.

Scientists could also use the helicopter images to look for features for the rover to study in further detail. Another part of the helicopter's job would be to check out the best places for the rover to collect key samples and rocks for a cache, which a next-generation rover could pick up later.

The vehicle is envisioned to weigh 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) and measure 3.6 feet (1.1 meters) across from the tip of one blade to the other. The prototype body looks like a medium-size cubic tissue box.

The current design is a proof-of-concept technology demonstration that has been tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Source: Nasa

Gully patterns document Martian climate cycles

Martian gullies, old and new Sharp-featured, relatively recent gullies (blue arrows) and degraded older gullies (gold) in the same location on the surface of Mars suggest multiple episodes of liquid water flow, consistent with cyclical climate change on the Red Planet. Image: NASA HiRISE

Gullies carved into impact craters on Mars provide a window into climate change on the Red Planet. A new analysis suggests Mars has undergone several ice ages in the last several million years. The driver of these climate swings is likely the Red Planet's wobbly axis tilt.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Geologists from Brown University have found new evidence that glacier-like ice deposits advanced and retreated multiple times in the midlatitude regions of Mars in the relatively recent past.

For the study, in press in the journal Icarus, the researchers looked at hundreds of gully-like features found on the walls of impact craters throughout the Martian midlatitudes. They conclude that many of those gullies were formed by meltwater from icy deposits, which are known to have covered the Martian midlatitudes within the last 2 million years. The study also turned up evidence of multiple gully-forming events, suggesting that these ice deposits waxed and waned several times over the last several million years — relatively recently in Mars’ 4.5-billion year history.

“These recent climate cycles have been predicted by computer models, but have not been documented with widespread geological evidence until now,” said Jay Dickson, a researcher at Brown and the study’s lead author. “This research shows that gullies have been episodic across the entire southern hemisphere, a distribution that is required for this to be a signal of global climate change.”

Wobbly axis

At present, most of the water ice on Mars is concentrated at its poles, but there’s a wealth of evidence that it wasn’t always that way. In 2003, research led by Brown geologists James Head and Jack Mustard showed that the midlatitude regions of Mars are draped to varying degrees by layers of ice-rich soil and dust. Landforms in and around the deposits, termed the “latitude-dependent mantle,” look remarkably similar to glacial terrains found here on Earth. The deposits suggest the presence of thin glacier-like ice deposits sometime between 400,000 and 2 million years ago.

The researchers concluded that this recent Martian ice age was likely linked to the planet’s wobbly rotation around its axis. Currently, the angle of Mars’ axis — its obliquity — is about 25 degrees, fairly close to that of Earth. But because Mars lacks a large moon to stabilize its rotation, its recent obliquity oscillates between around 15 degrees and as much as 35 degrees. (Earth’s obliquity, in contrast, varies only 2.4 degrees). Computer models predict that when the obliquity of Mars exceeds 30 degrees, increased sunlight at the poles causes water in the ice caps to be freed into the atmosphere. That water is transported and deposited closer to the equator in the form of glacial snow and ice.

Mars is known to have crossed the 30-degree threshold in obliquity several times during the last 20 million years. So if obliquity drives ice ages, there should be evidence for multiple glacial periods in the Martian midlatitudes, and that’s what the researchers were looking for in this latest study.

Gullies old and new

The researchers looked at detailed images taken by NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) of 479 gullies in the midlatitudes of Mars’ southern hemisphere. The gully systems, which form on steep crater walls, consist of an alcove at the top from which sediment is excavated, a channel through which material is carried, and a delta-like fan at the bottom where material is deposited.

The survey showed gully systems in various states of erosion and degradation. In some places, older gully fans, eroded over many years by the elements, had been crosscut by new gully fan systems. That suggests at least two gully-carving events. In other examples, gully fans were clearly visible, but the alcoves and channels that supplied them had disappeared, covered by a new layer of ice-rich soil. That too suggests multiple periods of glacial deposition.

“We show solid evidence of at least two periods of emplacement of the latitude-dependent mantle,” said Head, an author on the new paper. “That’s consistent with the idea of cyclical ice ages on Mars related to its obliquity.”

The work also bolsters the idea the many of gullies were carved by flows of liquid water. In recent years researchers have shown that some of these gully systems are still active today, when the flow of liquid water is unlikely. The present-day activity is likely driven by CO2 frost, which evaporates from the soil causing rock and rubble to slide down slopes. But this latest study shows that gullies were active when obliquity was higher and CO2 frost would have been sparse. And the association of gullies with ice-rich deposits strongly suggests that water carved these older gullies.

“We see similar features in Antarctica,” Head said. “Despite cold air temperatures, the sun is able to heat ice just enough for melting and gully activity to occur.”

This and other research pointing to relatively recent ice ages on Mars suggest the midlatitudes of Mars could be a place to look for signs of past life, Head said.

“I think people have this idea of Mars as an inactive place, that it is now as it has been for billions of years,” he said. “But it seems likely that climate cycles and global climate change are still occurring.”

Source: Brown University

NASA's newest Mars mission spacecraft enters orbit around Red Planet

This image shows an artist concept of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered Mars' orbit at 7:24 p.m. PDT (10:24 p.m. EDT) Sunday, Sept. 21, where it now will prepare to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere as never done before. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars.

"As the first orbiter dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere, MAVEN will greatly improve our understanding of the history of the Martian atmosphere, how the climate has changed over time, and how that has influenced the evolution of the surface and the potential habitability of the planet," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "It also will better inform a future mission to send humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s."

After a 10-month journey, confirmation of successful orbit insertion was received from MAVEN data observed at the Lockheed Martin operations center in Littleton, Colorado, as well as from tracking data monitored at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigation facility in Pasadena, California. The telemetry and tracking data were received by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna station in Canberra, Australia.

"NASA has a long history of scientific discovery at Mars and the safe arrival of MAVEN opens another chapter," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "Maven will complement NASA's other Martian robotic explorers-and those of our partners around the globe-to answer some fundamental questions about Mars and life beyond Earth."

Following orbit insertion, MAVEN will begin a six-week commissioning phase that includes maneuvering into its final science orbit and testing the instruments and

science-mapping commands. MAVEN then will begin its one Earth-year primary mission, taking measurements of the composition, structure and escape of gases in Mars' upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind.

"It's taken 11 years from the original concept for MAVEN to now having a spacecraft in orbit at Mars," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU/LASP). "I'm delighted to be here safely and successfully, and looking forward to starting our science mission."

The primary mission includes five "deep-dip" campaigns, in which MAVEN's periapsis, or lowest orbit altitude, will be lowered from 93 miles (150 kilometers) to about 77 miles (125 kilometers). These measurements will provide information down to where the upper and lower atmospheres meet, giving scientists a full profile of the upper tier.

"This was a very big day for MAVEN," said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. "We're very excited to join the constellation of spacecraft in orbit at Mars and on the surface of the Red Planet. The commissioning phase will keep the operations team busy for the next six weeks, and then we'll begin, at last, the science phase of the mission. Congratulations to the team for a job well done today."

MAVEN launched Nov. 18, 2013, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying three instrument packages. The Particles and Fields Package, built by the University of California at Berkeley with support from CU/LASP and Goddard, contains six instruments that will characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of the planet. The Remote Sensing Package, built by CU/LASP, will identify characteristics present throughout the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, provided by Goddard, will measure the composition and isotopes of atomic particles.

The spacecraft's principal investigator is based at CU/LASP. The university provided two science instruments and leads science operations, as well as education and public outreach, for the mission.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages the project and also provided two science instruments for the mission. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley provided four science instruments for MAVEN. JPL provides navigation and Deep Space Network support, and Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Program for NASA.

Source: Nasa

NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss

NASA’s MAVEN mission is observing the upper atmosphere of Mars to help understand climate change on the planet. MAVEN entered its science phase on Nov. 16, 2014. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Early discoveries by NASA's newest Mars orbiter are starting to reveal key features about the loss of the planet's atmosphere to space over time.

The findings are among the first returns from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which entered its science phase on Nov. 16. The observations reveal a new process by which the solar wind can penetrate deep into a planetary atmosphere. They include the first comprehensive measurements of the composition of Mars' upper atmosphere and electrically charged ionosphere. The results also offer an unprecedented view of ions as they gain the energy that will lead to their to escape from the atmosphere.

"We are beginning to see the links in a chain that begins with solar-driven processes acting on gas in the upper atmosphere and leads to atmospheric loss," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Over the course of the full mission, we'll be able to fill in this picture and really understand the processes by which the atmosphere changed over time."

On each orbit around Mars, MAVEN dips into the ionosphere -- the layer of ions and electrons extending from about 75 to 300 miles above the surface. This layer serves as a kind of shield around the planet, deflecting the solar wind, an intense stream of hot, high-energy particles from the sun.

Scientists have long thought that measurements of the solar wind could be made only before these particles hit the invisible boundary of the ionosphere. MAVEN's Solar Wind Ion Analyzer, however, has discovered a stream of solar-wind particles that are not deflected but penetrate deep into Mars' upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

Interactions in the upper atmosphere appear to transform this stream of ions into a neutral form that can penetrate to surprisingly low altitudes. Deep in the ionosphere, the stream emerges, almost Houdini-like, in ion form again. The reappearance of these ions, which retain characteristics of the pristine solar wind, provides a new way to track the properties of the solar wind and may make it easier to link drivers of atmospheric loss directly to activity in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

MAVEN's Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer is exploring the nature of the reservoir from which gases are escaping by conducting the first comprehensive analysis of the composition of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. These studies will help researchers make connections between the lower atmosphere, which controls climate, and the upper atmosphere, where the loss is occurring.

The instrument has measured the abundances of many gases in ion and neutral forms, revealing well-defined structure in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere, in contrast to the lower atmosphere, where gases are well-mixed. The variations in these abundances over time will provide new insights into the physics and chemistry of this region and have already provided evidence of significant upper-atmospheric "weather" that has not been measured in detail before.

New insight into how gases leave the atmosphere is being provided by the spacecraft's Suprathermal and Thermal Ion Composition (STATIC) instrument. Within hours after being turned on at Mars, STATIC detected the "polar plume" of ions escaping from Mars. This measurement is important in determining the rate of atmospheric loss.

As the satellite dips down into the atmosphere, STATIC identifies the cold ionosphere at closest approach and subsequently measures the heating of this charged gas to escape velocities as MAVEN rises in altitude. The energized ions ultimately break free of the planet's gravity as they move along a plume that extends behind Mars.

The MAVEN spacecraft and its instruments have the full technical capability proposed in 2007 and are on track to carry out the primary science mission. The MAVEN team delivered the spacecraft to Mars on schedule, launching on the very day in 2013 projected by the team 5 years earlier. MAVEN was also delivered well under the confirmed budget established by NASA in 2010.

The team's success can be attributed to a focused science mission that matched the available funding and diligent management of resources. There were also minimal changes in requirements on the hardware or science capabilities that could have driven costs. It also reflects good coordination between the principal investigator; the project management at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; the Mars Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; and the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters.

The entire project team contributed to MAVEN's success to date, including the management team, the spacecraft and science-instrument institutions, and the launch-services provider.

"The MAVEN spacecraft and its instruments are fully operational and well on their way to carrying out the primary science mission," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The management team's outstanding work enabled the project to be delivered on schedule and under budget."

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA Goddard instrument makes first detection of organic matter on Mars

MSL Curiosity rover at "John Klein" drill site. This self-portrait of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager on Feb. 3, 2013 plus three exposures taken May 10, 2013 to show two holes (in lower left quadrant) where Curiosity used its drill on the rock target "John Klein". Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety of molecules made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. However, organic molecules can also be made by chemical reactions that don't involve life, and there is not enough evidence to tell if the matter found by the team came from ancient Martian life or from a non-biological process. Examples of non-biological sources include chemical reactions in water at ancient Martian hot springs or delivery of organic material to Mars by interplanetary dust or fragments of asteroids and comets.

The surface of Mars is currently inhospitable to life as we know it, but there is evidence that the Red Planet once had a climate that could have supported life billions of years ago. For example, features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water have been discovered on the Martian surface. The Curiosity rover with its suite of instruments including SAM was sent to Mars in 2011 to discover more about the ancient habitable Martian environment by examining clues in the chemistry of rocks and the atmosphere.

The organic molecules found by the team were in a drilled sample of the Sheepbed mudstone in Gale crater, the landing site for the Curiosity rover. Scientists think the crater was once the site of a lake billions of years ago, and rocks like mudstone formed from sediment in the lake. Moreover, this mudstone was found to contain 20 percent smectite clays. On Earth, such clays are known to provide high surface area and optimal interlayer sites for the concentration and preservation of organic compounds when rapidly deposited under reducing chemical conditions.

While the team can't conclude that there was life at Gale crater, the discovery shows that the ancient environment offered a supply of reduced organic molecules for use as building blocks for life and an energy source for life. Curiosity's earlier analysis of this same mudstone revealed that the environment offered water and chemical elements essential for life and a different chemical energy source.

"We think life began on Earth around 3.8 billion years ago, and our result shows that places on Mars had the same conditions at that time -- liquid water, a warm environment, and organic matter," said Caroline Freissinet of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "So if life emerged on Earth in these conditions, why not on Mars as well?" Freissinet is lead author of a paper on this research submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

The organic molecules found by the team also have chlorine atoms, and include chlorobenzene and several dichloroalkanes, such as dichloroethane, dichloropropane and dichlorobutane. Chlorobenzene is the most abundant with concentrations between 150 and 300 parts-per-billion. Chlorobenzene is not a naturally occurring compound on Earth. It is used in the manufacturing process for pesticides (insecticide DDT), herbicides, adhesives, paints and rubber. Dichloropropane is used as an industrial solvent to make paint strippers, varnishes and furniture finish removers, and is classified as a carcinogen.

It's possible that these chlorine-containing organic molecules were present as such in the mudstone. However, according to the team, it's more likely that a different suite of precursor organic molecules was in the mudstone, and that the chlorinated organics formed from reactions inside the SAM instrument as the sample was heated for analysis. Perchlorates (a chlorine atom bound to four oxygen atoms) are abundant on the surface of Mars. It's possible that as the sample was heated, chlorine from perchlorate combined with fragments from precursor organic molecules in the mudstone to produce the chlorinated organic molecules detected by SAM.

In 1976, the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer instrument on NASA's Viking landers detected two simple chlorinated hydrocarbons after heating Martian soils for analysis (chloromethane and dichloromethane). However they were not able to rule out that the compounds were derived from the instrument itself, according to the team. While sources within the SAM instrument also produce chlorinated hydrocarbons, they don't make more than 22 parts-per-billion of chlorobenzene, far below the amounts detected in the mudstone sample, giving the team confidence that organic molecules really are present on Mars.

The SAM instrument suite was built at NASA Goddard with significant elements provided by industry, university, and national and international NASA partners.

For this analysis, the Curiosity rover sample acquisition system drilled into a mudstone and filtered fine particles of it through a sieve, then delivered a portion of the sample to the SAM laboratory. SAM detected the compounds using its Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) mode by heating the sample up to about 875 degrees Celsius (around 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit) and then monitoring the volatiles released from the sample using a quadrupole mass spectrometer, which identifies molecules by their mass using electric fields. SAM also detected and identified the compounds using its Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) mode. In this mode, volatiles are separated by the amount of time they take to travel through a narrow tube (gas chromatography -- certain molecules interact with the sides of the tube more readily and thus travel more slowly) and then identified by their signature mass fragments in the mass spectrometer.

The first evidence for elevated levels of chlorobenzene and dichloroalkanes released from the mudstone was obtained on Curiosity Sol 290 (May 30, 2013) with the third analysis of the Cumberland sample at Sheepbed. The team spent over a year carefully analyzing the result, including conducting laboratory experiments with instruments and methods similar to SAM, to be sure that SAM could not be producing the amount of organic material detected.

"The search for organics on Mars has been extremely challenging for the team," said Daniel Glavin of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the paper. "First, we need to identify environments in Gale crater that would have enabled the concentration of organics in sediments. Then they need to survive the conversion of sediment to rock, where pore fluids and dissolved substances may oxidize and destroy organics. Organics can then be destroyed during exposure of rocks at the surface of Mars to intense ionizing radiation and oxidants. Finally, to identify any organic compounds that have survived, we have to deal with oxychlorine compounds and possibly other strong oxidants in the sample which will react with and combust organic compounds to carbon dioxide and chlorinated hydrocarbons when the samples are heated by SAM."

As part of Curiosity's plan for exploration, an important strategic goal was to sample rocks that represent different combinations of the variables thought to control organic preservation. "The SAM and Mars Science Laboratory teams have worked very hard to achieve this result," said John Grotzinger of Caltech, Mars Science Laboratory's Project Scientist. "Only by drilling additional rock samples in different locations, and representing different geologic histories were we able to tease out this result. At the time we first saw evidence of these organic molecules in the Cumberland sample it was uncertain if they were derived from Mars, however, additional drilling has not produced the same compounds as might be predicted for contamination, indicating that the carbon in the detected organic molecules is very likely of Martian origin."

Source: nasa

Dust devil and the details: Spinning up a storm on Mars

A dust devil reaching half a mile above the plain of Amazonis Planitia is twisted by the wind at different levels above the surface. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona photo

Spinning up a dust devil in the thin air of Mars requires a stronger updraft than is needed to create a similar vortex on Earth, according to research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

Early results from this research in UAH's Atmospheric Science Department are scheduled for presentation today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

"To start a dust devil on Mars you need convection, a strong updraft," said Bryce Williams, an atmospheric science graduate student at UAH. "We looked at the ratio between convection and surface turbulence to find the sweet spot where there is enough updraft to overcome the low level wind and turbulence. And on Mars, where we think the process that creates a vortex is more easily disrupted by frictional dissipation -- turbulence and wind at the surface -- you need twice as much convective updraft as you do on Earth."

Williams and UAH's Dr. Udaysankar Nair looked for the dust devil sweet spot by combining data from a study of Australian dust devils with meteorological observations collected during the Viking Lander mission. They used that data and a one-dimensional Mars planetary boundary layer model to find thresholds of the ratio between convection and surface friction velocities that identify conditions conducive to forming dust devils.

While dust devils on Earth are seldom more than meteorological curiosities, on Mars they sometimes grow to the size of terrestrial tornados, with a funnel more than 100 meters wide stretching as much as 12 miles above the Martian surface.

Williams and Nair are looking at the effects dust devils have on lifting dust into the Martian atmosphere. Dust in the Martian air and its radiative forcing are important modulators of the planet's climate.

"The Martian air is so thin, dust has a greater effect on energy transfers in the atmosphere and on the surface than it does in Earth's thick atmosphere," said Nair, an associate professor of atmospheric science. Dust in the Martian air cools the surface during the day and emits long-wave radiation that warms the surface at night.

Source: University of Alabama Huntsville

Making measurements when a comet passes close to Mars

Comet Siding Spring and Mars. Credit: Artist's impression: NASA

On Sunday 19 October at 20:29 CET a comet will pass close to the planet Mars. At the same time the Swedish instrument ASPERA-3 is on board the European satellite Mars Express orbiting Mars and ready to make measurements.

"No one has before made measurements when a comet passes so close by a planet," says Associate Professor Mats Holmström at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna, Sweden.

The comet Siding Spring will pass by Mars at a distance of only 140,000 km, about a third of the distance from the Earth to the Moon, by way of comparison. The outer parts of the comet's thin atmosphere will collide at high speed (56 km/sec) with the atmosphere of Mars.

"We expect that gas and dust from the comet will impact on the Martian atmosphere, which will be temporarily heated and will expand," says Mats Holmström. "We should be able to see that with our instrument."

The Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) has Principal Investigator responsibility for the satellite instrument ASPERA-3 which is an international collaboration with participants from some 15 research groups from about 10 countries. ASPERA-3 on board the measures how charged particles from the sun, the so-called solar wind, influences the atmosphere of Mars. Mars Express was lauched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and has been orbiting Mars since 2003.

Source: Expertsvar

New method for detecting water on Mars

Washington State University senior Kellie Wall has helped develop a new method for detecting water on Mars. Her findings appear in Nature Communications, one of the most influential general science journals. Credit: Washington State University photo

A Washington State University undergraduate has helped develop a new method for detecting water on Mars.  

Kellie Wall, 21, of Port Orchard, Wash., looked for evidence that water influenced crystal formation in basalt, the dark volcanic rock that covers most of eastern Washington and Oregon. She then compared this with volcanic rock observations made by the rover Curiosity on Mars' Gale Crater.

"This is really cool because it could potentially be useful for not only the study of rocks on Earth but on Mars and other planets," said Wall.

She is the lead author of the article in Nature Communications.  

Co-authors include Michael Rowe, a former WSU research professor now at New Zealand's University of Auckland, and Ben Ellis, a former WSU post-doctoral researcher now at the Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology in Zurich, Switzerland. The other authors are Mariek Schmidt of Brock University in Canada and Jennifer Eccles of the University of Auckland.

Wall was fascinated by volcanoes as a child, touring the Cascade mountain range with her father and marveling at features like the lava tubes under Mount St. Helens.

"I was really excited because I thought that just on the other side of the walls there could be lava," she said.

Still, she started out as a communications major at WSU, choosing a geology class to fulfill a science requirement.

"I loved it so much that I changed my major," she said.

In her sophomore year, Rowe and Ellis asked if she would like to look at the eruption styles of Earth and Mars volcanoes.

"I was really crazy about it -- really intrigued by the buzzword 'Mars,'" she said.

"I've worked with a lot of undergraduate researchers over the years and she's the best that I've come across," said Rowe. "That's why we gave her so much responsibility on this project, because we knew she would do it well."

The researchers established a method to quantify the texture of volcanic rock using an index called "groundmass crystallinity." Wall compares it to the texture of a chocolate chip cookie, which can vary according to how it is cooked and cooled.

"We were interested in the cookie dough part of the cookie," she said.

Liquid volcanic rock cools rapidly as it hits water, flash-freezing to form mostly glass. Without water, it takes longer to cool and forms crystals within the groundmass, the cookie dough part.

Using an x-ray diffraction machine on the WSU campus, home to one of the most sophisticated basalt labs in the world, Wall analyzed rock samples from the Northwest, New Zealand and Italy's Mount Etna and compared them to rocks analyzed by Curiosity's x-ray diffractometer.

"The rocks that erupted and interacted with water, which we call phreatomagmatic, all had a groundmass crystallinity as low as 8 percent and ranging up to about 35 percent," she said. 

"The rocks that erupted without interaction with water had groundmass crystallinities from about 45 percent upwards to almost totally crystalline.

"The analyses we did on the Mars soil samples fell in the range of the magmatic type eruptions, which are the ones erupted without water interaction," she said.

Water is a key indicator for the potential of microbial life on the red planet. While Wall and her colleagues didn't see evidence of it from two sites they studied, their method could look for water elsewhere.

"I think this quantification of volcanic textures is a new facet of the water story that hasn't yet been explored," Wall said. "Most of the studies searching for water have focused on either looking for sedimentary structures -- large- and small-scale -- for evidence of water, or looking for rocks like limestones that actually would have formed in a water-rich environment.

"But being able to determine the environment through the texture of a volcanic rock is something pretty cool and different," she said. "I think it's an interesting avenue for future research."

Source: Washington State University

NASA rover drill pulls first taste from Mars mountain

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the first sample-collection hole drilled in Mount Sharp, the layered mountain that is the science destination of the rover's extended mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has collected its first taste of the layered mountain whose scientific allure drew the mission to choose this part of Mars as a landing site.

Late Wednesday, Sept. 24, the rover's hammering drill chewed about 2.6 inches (6.7 centimeters) deep into a basal-layer outcrop on Mount Sharp and collected a powdered-rock sample. Data and images received early Thursday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, confirmed success of this operation. The powder collected by the drilling is temporarily held within the sample-handling mechanism on the rover's arm.

"This drilling target is at the lowest part of the base layer of the mountain, and from here we plan to examine the higher, younger layers exposed in the nearby hills," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "This first look at rocks we believe to underlie Mount Sharp is exciting because it will begin to form a picture of the environment at the time the mountain formed, and what led to its growth."

After landing on Mars in August 2012 but before beginning the drive toward Mount Sharp, Curiosity spent much of the mission's first year productively studying an area much closer to the landing site, but in the opposite direction. The mission accomplished its science goals in that Yellowknife Bay area. Analysis of drilled rocks there disclosed an ancient lakebed environment that, more than three billion years ago, offered ingredients and a chemical energy gradient favorable for microbes, if any existed there.

From Yellowknife Bay to the base of Mount Sharp, Curiosity drove more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) in about 15 months, with pauses at a few science waypoints. The emphasis in mission operations has now changed from drive, drive, drive to systematic layer-by-layer investigation.

"We're putting on the brakes to study this amazing mountain," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Jennifer Trosper of JPL. "Curiosity flew hundreds of millions of miles to do this."

Curiosity arrived Sept. 19 at an outcrop called "Pahrump Hills," which is a section of the mountain's basal geological unit, called the Murray formation. Three days later, the rover completed a "mini-drill" procedure at the selected drilling target, "Confidence Hills," to assess the target rock's suitability for drilling. A mini-drill activity last month determined that a rock slab under consideration then was not stable enough for full drilling, but Confidence Hills passed this test.

The rock is softer than any of the previous three targets where Curiosity has collected a drilled sample for analysis.

Between the mini-drill test and the sample-collection drilling, researchers used tools on Curiosity's mast and robotic arm for close-up inspection of geometrically distinctive features on the nearby surface of the rock.

These features on the Murray formation mudstones are the accumulations of resistant materials. They occur both as discrete clusters and as dendrites, where forms are arranged in tree-like branching. By investigating the shapes and chemical ingredients in these features, the team hopes to gain information about the possible composition of fluids at this Martian location long ago.

The next step will be to deliver the rock-powder sample into a scoop on the rover's arm. In the open scoop, the powder's texture can be observed for an assessment of whether it is safe for further sieving, portioning and delivery into Curiosity's internal laboratory instruments without clogging hardware. The instruments can perform many types of analysis to identify chemistry and mineralogy of the source rock.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions. JPL, a division of Caltech, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Earth-like soils on Mars? Ancient fossilized soils potentially found deep inside impact crater suggest microbial life

Rover image from Gale Crater reveals soil features similar to paleosols on Earth. Credit: NASA

Soil deep in a crater dating to some 3.7 billion years ago contains evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter, saysUniversity of Oregon geologist Gregory Retallack, based on images and data captured by the rover Curiosity.

NASA rovers have shown Martian landscapes littered with loose rocks from impacts or layered by catastrophic floods, rather than the smooth contours of soils that soften landscapes on Earth. However, recent images from Curiosity from the impact Gale Crater, Retallack said, reveal Earth-like soil profiles with cracked surfaces lined with sulfate, ellipsoidal hollows and concentrations of sulfate comparable with soils in Antarctic Dry Valleys and Chile's Atacama Desert.

His analyses appear in a paper placed online this week by the journal Geology in advance of print in the September issue of the world's top-ranked journal in the field. Retallack, the paper's lone author, studied mineral and chemical data published by researchers closely tied with the Curiosity mission. Retallack, professor of geological sciences and co-director of paleontology research at the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History, is an internationally known expert on the recognition of paleosols -- ancient fossilized soils contained in rocks.

"The pictures were the first clue, but then all the data really nailed it," Retallack said. "The key to this discovery has been the superb chemical and mineral analytical capability of the Curiosity Rover, which is an order of magnitude improvement over earlier generations of rovers. The new data show clear chemical weathering trends, and clay accumulation at the expense of the mineral olivine, as expected in soils on Earth. Phosphorus depletion within the profiles is especially tantalizing, because it attributed to microbial activity on Earth."

The ancient soils, he said, do not prove that Mars once contained life, but they do add to growing evidence that an early wetter and warmer Mars was more habitable than the planet has been in the past 3 billion years.

Curiosity rover is now exploring topographically higher and geologically younger layers within the crater, where the soils appear less conducive to life. For a record of older life and soils on Mars, Retallack said, new missions will be needed to explore older and more clayey terrains.

Surface cracks in the deeply buried soils suggest typical soil clods. Vesicular hollows, or rounded holes, and sulfate concentrations, he said, are both features of desert soils on Earth.

"None of these features is seen in younger surface soils of Mars," Retallack said. "The exploration of Mars, like that of other planetary bodies, commonly turns up unexpected discoveries, but it is equally unexpected to discover such familiar ground."

The newly discovered soils provide more benign and habitable soil conditions than known before on Mars. Their dating to 3.7 billion years ago, he noted, puts them into a time of transition from "an early benign water cycle on Mars to the acidic and arid Mars of today." 

Life on Earth is believed to have emerged and began diversifying about 3.5 billion years ago, but some scientists have theorized that potential evidence that might take life on Earth farther back was destroyed by plate tectonics, which did not occur on Mars.

In an email, Malcolm Walter of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, who was not involved in the research, said the potential discovery of these fossilized soils in the Gale Crater dramatically increases the possibility that Mars has microbes. "There is a real possibility that there is or was life on Mars," he wrote.

Retallack noted that Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology in Florida has speculated that life is more likely to have originated on a soil planet like Mars than a water planet like Earth. In an email, Benner wrote that Retallack's paper "shows not only soils that might be direct products of an early Martian life, but also the wet-dry cycles that many models require for the emergence of life."

Source: University of Oregon

Tales from a Martian rock: New chemical analysis of ancient Martian meteorite provides clues to planet's history of habitability

The surface of Mars was once wet, but no water flows there now. UC San Diego chemists and others took a close look at meteorite that may have been blasted from this huge rift across the planet’s surface. The image is a composite of hundreds of photos taken by NASA’s Viking missions in the 1970s. Credit: USGS, NASA

A new analysis of a Martian rock that meteorite hunters plucked from an Antarctic ice field 30 years ago this month reveals a record of the planet's climate billions of years ago, back when water likely washed across its surface and any life that ever formed there might have emerged.

Scientists from the University of California, San Diego, NASA and the Smithsonian Institution report detailed measurements of minerals within the meteorite in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

"Minerals within the meteorite hold a snapshot of the planet's ancient chemistry, of interactions between water and atmosphere," said Robina Shaheen, a project scientist at UC San Diego and the lead author of the report.

The unlovely stone, which fell to Earth 13 thousand years ago, looked a lot like a potato and has quite a history. Designated ALH84001, it is the oldest meteorite we have from Mars, a chunk of solidified magma from a volcano that erupted four billion years ago. Since then something liquid, probably water, seeped through pores in the rock and deposited globules of carbonates and other minerals.

The carbonates vary subtly depending on the sources of their carbon and oxygen atoms. Both carbon and oxygen occur in heavier and lighter versions, or isotopes. The relative abundances of isotopes forms a chemical signature that careful analysis and sensitive measurements can uncover.

Mars's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide but contains some ozone. The balance of oxygen isotopes within ozone are strikingly weird with enrichment of heavy isotopes through a physical chemical phenomenon first described by co-author Mark Thiemens, a professor of chemistry at UC San Diego, and colleagues 25 years ago.

"When ozone reacts with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it transfers its isotopic weirdness to the new molecule," said Shaheen, who investigated this process of oxygen isotope exchange as a graduate student at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. When carbon dioxide reacts with water to make carbonates, the isotopic signature continues to be preserved.

The degree of isotopic weirdness in the carbonates reflects how much water and ozone was present when they formed. It's a record of climate 3.9 billion years ago, locked in a stable mineral. The more water, the smaller the weird ozone signal.

This team measured a pronounced ozone signal in the carbonates within the meteorite, suggesting that although Mars had water back then, vast oceans were unlikely. Instead, the early Martian landscape probably held smaller seas.

"What's also new is our simultaneous measurements of carbon isotopes on the same samples. The mix of carbon isotopes suggest that the different minerals within the meteorite had separate origins," Shaheen said. "They tell us the story of the chemical and isotopic compositions of the atmospheric carbon dioxide."

ALH84001 held tiny tubes of carbonate that some scientists saw as potential evidence of microbial life, though a biological origin for the structures has been discarded. On December 16, NASA announced another potential whiff of Martian life in the form of methane sniffed by the rover Curiosity.

Carbonates can be deposited by living things that scavenge the minerals to build their skeletons, but that is not the case for the minerals measured by this team. 

"The carbonate we see is not from living things," Shaheen said. "It has anomalous oxygen isotopes that tell us this carbonate is abiotic."

By measuring the isotopes in multiple ways, the chemists found carbonates depleted in carbon-13 and enriched in oxygen-18. That is, Mars's atmosphere in this era, a period of great bombardment, had much less carbon-13 than it does today.

The change in relative abundances of carbon and oxygen isotopes may have occurred through extensive loss of Martian atmosphere. A thicker atmosphere would likely have been required for liquid water to flow on the planet's chilly surface.

"We now have a much deeper and specific insight into the earliest oxygen-water system in the solar system," Thiemens said. "The question that remains is when did planets, Earth and Mars, get water, and in the case of Mars, where did it go? We've made great progress, but still deep mysteries remain."

Source: University of California - San Diego

NASA Goddard instrument makes first detection of organic matter on Mars

MSL Curiosity rover at "John Klein" drill site. This self-portrait of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager on Feb. 3, 2013 plus three exposures taken May 10, 2013 to show two holes (in lower left quadrant) where Curiosity used its drill on the rock target "John Klein". Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety of molecules made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. However, organic molecules can also be made by chemical reactions that don't involve life, and there is not enough evidence to tell if the matter found by the team came from ancient Martian life or from a non-biological process. Examples of non-biological sources include chemical reactions in water at ancient Martian hot springs or delivery of organic material to Mars by interplanetary dust or fragments of asteroids and comets.

The surface of Mars is currently inhospitable to life as we know it, but there is evidence that the Red Planet once had a climate that could have supported life billions of years ago. For example, features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water have been discovered on the Martian surface. The Curiosity rover with its suite of instruments including SAM was sent to Mars in 2011 to discover more about the ancient habitable Martian environment by examining clues in the chemistry of rocks and the atmosphere.

The organic molecules found by the team were in a drilled sample of the Sheepbed mudstone in Gale crater, the landing site for the Curiosity rover. Scientists think the crater was once the site of a lake billions of years ago, and rocks like mudstone formed from sediment in the lake. Moreover, this mudstone was found to contain 20 percent smectite clays. On Earth, such clays are known to provide high surface area and optimal interlayer sites for the concentration and preservation of organic compounds when rapidly deposited under reducing chemical conditions.

While the team can't conclude that there was life at Gale crater, the discovery shows that the ancient environment offered a supply of reduced organic molecules for use as building blocks for life and an energy source for life. Curiosity's earlier analysis of this same mudstone revealed that the environment offered water and chemical elements essential for life and a different chemical energy source.

"We think life began on Earth around 3.8 billion years ago, and our result shows that places on Mars had the same conditions at that time -- liquid water, a warm environment, and organic matter," said Caroline Freissinet of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "So if life emerged on Earth in these conditions, why not on Mars as well?" Freissinet is lead author of a paper on this research submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

The organic molecules found by the team also have chlorine atoms, and include chlorobenzene and several dichloroalkanes, such as dichloroethane, dichloropropane and dichlorobutane. Chlorobenzene is the most abundant with concentrations between 150 and 300 parts-per-billion. Chlorobenzene is not a naturally occurring compound on Earth. It is used in the manufacturing process for pesticides (insecticide DDT), herbicides, adhesives, paints and rubber. Dichloropropane is used as an industrial solvent to make paint strippers, varnishes and furniture finish removers, and is classified as a carcinogen.
It's possible that these chlorine-containing organic molecules were present as such in the mudstone. However, according to the team, it's more likely that a different suite of precursor organic molecules was in the mudstone, and that the chlorinated organics formed from reactions inside the SAM instrument as the sample was heated for analysis. Perchlorates (a chlorine atom bound to four oxygen atoms) are abundant on the surface of Mars. It's possible that as the sample was heated, chlorine from perchlorate combined with fragments from precursor organic molecules in the mudstone to produce the chlorinated organic molecules detected by SAM.

In 1976, the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer instrument on NASA's Viking landers detected two simple chlorinated hydrocarbons after heating Martian soils for analysis (chloromethane and dichloromethane). However they were not able to rule out that the compounds were derived from the instrument itself, according to the team. While sources within the SAM instrument also produce chlorinated hydrocarbons, they don't make more than 22 parts-per-billion of chlorobenzene, far below the amounts detected in the mudstone sample, giving the team confidence that organic molecules really are present on Mars.

The SAM instrument suite was built at NASA Goddard with significant elements provided by industry, university, and national and international NASA partners.

For this analysis, the Curiosity rover sample acquisition system drilled into a mudstone and filtered fine particles of it through a sieve, then delivered a portion of the sample to the SAM laboratory. SAM detected the compounds using its Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) mode by heating the sample up to about 875 degrees Celsius (around 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit) and then monitoring the volatiles released from the sample using a quadrupole mass spectrometer, which identifies molecules by their mass using electric fields. SAM also detected and identified the compounds using its Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) mode. In this mode, volatiles are separated by the amount of time they take to travel through a narrow tube (gas chromatography -- certain molecules interact with the sides of the tube more readily and thus travel more slowly) and then identified by their signature mass fragments in the mass spectrometer.

The first evidence for elevated levels of chlorobenzene and dichloroalkanes released from the mudstone was obtained on Curiosity Sol 290 (May 30, 2013) with the third analysis of the Cumberland sample at Sheepbed. The team spent over a year carefully analyzing the result, including conducting laboratory experiments with instruments and methods similar to SAM, to be sure that SAM could not be producing the amount of organic material detected.

"The search for organics on Mars has been extremely challenging for the team," said Daniel Glavin of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the paper. "First, we need to identify environments in Gale crater that would have enabled the concentration of organics in sediments. Then they need to survive the conversion of sediment to rock, where pore fluids and dissolved substances may oxidize and destroy organics. Organics can then be destroyed during exposure of rocks at the surface of Mars to intense ionizing radiation and oxidants. Finally, to identify any organic compounds that have survived, we have to deal with oxychlorine compounds and possibly other strong oxidants in the sample which will react with and combust organic compounds to carbon dioxide and chlorinated hydrocarbons when the samples are heated by SAM."

As part of Curiosity's plan for exploration, an important strategic goal was to sample rocks that represent different combinations of the variables thought to control organic preservation. "The SAM and Mars Science Laboratory teams have worked very hard to achieve this result," said John Grotzinger of Caltech, Mars Science Laboratory's Project Scientist. "Only by drilling additional rock samples in different locations, and representing different geologic histories were we able to tease out this result. At the time we first saw evidence of these organic molecules in the Cumberland sample it was uncertain if they were derived from Mars, however, additional drilling has not produced the same compounds as might be predicted for contamination, indicating that the carbon in the detected organic molecules is very likely of Martian origin."

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center