NASA's Curiosity rover has recently made a surprising find on Mars that could help scientists get one step closer to figuring out if the Red Planet has ever supported life.
The 1-ton Curiosity rover also discovered a fleeting spike in the levels of
NASA's Curiosity rover has recently made a surprising find on Mars that could help scientists get one step closer to figuring out if the Red Planet has ever supported life.
The 1-ton Curiosity rover also discovered a fleeting spike in the levels of methane at its landing site, Gale Crater. Over the course of four measurements in two months on Mars, average methane levels increased 10 fold before quickly dissipating, but the cause of the fluctuation is still unknown.
Researchers are particularly interested in finding methane on alien worlds because living organisms produce an overwhelming amount of the gas on Earth. While finding significant amounts of methane on Mars isn't a sure-fire sign of past or present life — geological processes can also produce the gas — it's still a good starting point, according to many scientists. [The Search for Life on Mars in Photos]
"Right now, it's too much of a single-point measurement for us really to jump to any conclusions," Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland one of the authors of the new methane study, told Space.com. "So all we can really do is lay out the possibilities. And we certainly should have an open mind. Maybe there are microbes on Mars cranking out methane, but we sure can't say that with any certainty. It's just speculation at this point."
A new baseline
The new study, which was published online today (Dec. 16) in the journal Science, also reveals that Curiosity found methane levels in the Martian atmosphere to be, on average, about 0.7 parts per billion.
This level is lower than previous estimates and calculations, but still higher than earlier Curiosity readings of methane published last year. The rover's earlier measurements did not find any trace of methane in the Martian atmosphere; however, scientists found a way to concentrate the rover's samples of the atmosphere, allowing them to get the most recent data about the gas.
The lack of methane measured earlier by Curiosity was disappointing for many scientists because of its potentially damning implication for finding Martian life. But the new measurements could mean there's hope yet.
"The original Science [journal] paper was very negative about there being any credence to large fluctuations in methane," Jan-Peter Muller, an ExoMars and Curiosity team member that isn't directly involved with the new study, told Space.com. "The current paper shows that such conclusions should be taken with a great deal of skepticism until sufficient data has been collected."
Water and spikes in methane
Another study published in Science today also details another exciting Curiosity find on Mars. Using a sample of clay, scientists have measured the hydrogen in the Martian atmosphere about 3 billion to 3.7 billion years ago. The new finding could help pin down when the Red Planet lost its liquid surface water.
NASA officials also announced during a news conference at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union today that Curiosity has measured organic compounds in a rock the rover drill