The unanticipated discovery of a mineral in Mars’ arctic soil doesn’t rule out the possibility that the red planet could support life, scientists with the Phoenix lander said today.
While cautioning that the discovery of perchlorate, an oxidizing agent found in rocket fuel, still had to be confirmed by more experiments, scientists with the UA-led Phoenix Mars Mission rejected speculation that the mineral’s presence killed the possibility of life on the planet.
“These compounds are quite stable and don’t destroy organic compounds,” said Peter Smith, the UA’s lead scientist for the mission. “This is an important piece in the puzzle and it is neither good nor bad for life.” While perchlorate can be hazardous to some life forms on Earth, others use the molecules for life, including in remote arid desert regions.
“The interesting thing is perchlorate is a relatively inert oxidant,” said Richard Quinn, a mission scientist. “There are some microbes that use it as an energy source.”
Scientists debate the meaning of mineral found on Mars Arizona Daily Star
Toxin in soil may mean no life on Mars
NASA’s Phoenix lander has discovered a toxic chemical in soil near Mars’ north pole, dimming hopes for finding life on the Red Planet, the probe’s operators said Monday. The chemical, perchlorate, is an oxidant widely used in solid rocket fuel. Researchers are still puzzling over the results and checking to make sure the perchlorate wasn’t carried to Mars from Earth, the University of Arizona-based science team said.
“While we have not completed our process on these soil samples, we have very interesting intermediate results,” Peter Smith, the principal investigator for the project, said in a written statement.
Early readings from a device aboard Phoenix called the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, “suggested Earth-like soil,” Smith said.
“Further analysis has revealed un-Earthlike aspects of the soil chemistry,” he said.
The Phoenix team has scheduled a teleconference for Tuesday to discuss the findings.
The Dirt on Mars Phoenix Lander Contamination Wired
Could the Mars Phoenix lander have been contaminated by bacteria from Earth?
The possibility was raised by rumor-multipliers feasting on an Aviation Week report that the White House had been briefed on “major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the ‘potential for life’ on Mars.”
The report has since been retracted, but it raised the prospect, if only wildly, that the Phoenix found Martian soil so habitable because transplanted microbes flourished there. But that, say researchers, is highly unlikely.
Mars explorers have a profound self-interest in ensuring that bacterial hitchhikers don’t confound their results: imagine asking for NASA funding after claiming a plucky strain of underarm bacteria as extraterrestrial life. And if Earthly bacteria survives a trip and then flourishes, it could upset an alien ecosystem — the equivalent of finding something rare and priceless by stepping on it.
White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life Aviation Week & Space Technology
The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the “potential for life” on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.
Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability–the “potential” for Mars to support life–at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.
The data are much more complex than results related NASA’s July 31 announcement that Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice at the site.
Water Ice on Mars Confirmed
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has confirmed the existence of water ice on Mars.
Mission scientists celebrated the news after a sample of the ice was finally delivered to one of the lander’s instruments. Phoenix’s mission has also officially been extended for one month beyond its original mission, NASA announced today at a briefing at the University of Arizona at Tucson, where mission control is currently based.
“I’m very happy to announce that we’ve gotten an ice sample,” said the University of Arizona’s William Boynton, co-investigator for Phoenix’s Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which heats up samples and analyzes the vapors they give off to determine their composition.
“We have water,” Boynton added. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”
Phoenix Mars Lander Working With Sticky Soil University of Arizona
Scientists and engineers on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Mission spent the weekend examining how the icy soil on Mars interacts with the scoop on the lander’s robotic arm, while trying different techniques to deliver a sample to one of the instruments.
“It has really been a science experiment just learning how to interact with the icy soil on Mars – how it reacts with the scoop, its stickiness, whether it’s better to have it in the shade or the sunlight,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of The University of Arizona.
Living on Mars Time: Scientists Suffer Perpetual Jet Lag
Morten Bo Madsen spends his work day crunching data on a laptop seated in front of a clear plastic-covered box about the size of a widescreen computer monitor that emits a startlingly bright blue light.
No, this isn’t a scene from a sci-fi movie. Madsen is one of the 150 scientists and engineers working on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission. The bright light keeps Madsen’s internal clock in check, because Madsen, you see, is living on Mars time.
Phoenix is a $420 million mission with the aim of sampling and analyzing the dirt and subsurface ice layer in the north polar regions of Mars as it looks for signs that the red planet may have been habitable at some point in the past.
Since the spacecraft landed on Mars on May 25, mission controllers have been living on its schedule, or rather the exact opposite of it. When the spacecraft is sleeping during the Martian night, the scientists are up analyzing data; when the spacecraft rises at the beginning of the day on Mars, they retire and let Phoenix do its work.
Mars Lander Pulls All-Nighter
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander pulled an all-nighter for the first time Monday.
Mission controllers extended the spacecraft’s schedule to keep it awake during the Martian night so the lander could coordinate with observations made by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) as it flew over Phoenix.
Phoenix is using its weather station (which measures temperature, wind speed and wind direction), stereo camera and fork-like thermal and conductivity probe to monitor changes in the lower atmosphere and at the surface of Mars as MRO monitors the atmosphere and ground from above.
Mars Lander Exposes More Ice
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander used its robotic arm to expose more of the hard icy layer just below the Martian surface so that it can more easily gather a sample of the material for analysis.
The trench, informally called “Snow White,” was about 8 by 12 inches (20 by 30 centimeters) after digging by the arm Saturday. Mission controllers sent commands to the spacecraft Monday to further extend the length of the trench by about 6 inches (15 centimeters).
Scientists said tests in a lab on Earth suggested more area must be exposed in order to collect a proper sample.
Martian soil appears able to support life
“Flabbergasted” NASA scientists said on Thursday that Martian soil appeared to contain the requirements to support life, although more work would be needed to prove it. Scientists working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which has already found ice on the planet, said preliminary analysis by the lander’s instruments on a sample of soil scooped up by the spacecraft’s robotic arm had shown it to be much more alkaline than expected.
“We basically have found what appears to be the requirements, the nutrients, to support life whether past present or future,” Sam Kounaves, the lead investigator for the wet chemistry laboratory on Phoenix, told journalists.