[Vision2020] NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples: 12.03.12

[Ted Moffett]

NASA report below not quite living up to the hype, but no doubt the hype
helped increase the advertising revenue of various media outlets living
moment to moment on ratings and Internet site visits etc...  I wonder how
many media scandals are generated by people being secretly paid on the side
to create a public media feeding frenzy?  Regardless of whether this
actually happens, if I was Lindsay Lohan, I'd want a cut of the advertising
revenue generated from media exploitation of her personal problems.  Geez!
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20121203.html

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of
instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex
chemistry within the Martian soil. Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing
substances, among other ingredients, showed up in samples Curiosity's arm
delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover.

Detection of the substances during this early phase of the mission
demonstrates the laboratory's capability to analyze diverse soil and rock
samples over the next two years. Scientists also have been verifying the
capabilities of the rover's instruments.

Curiosity is the first Mars rover able to scoop soil into analytical
instruments. The specific soil sample came from a drift of windblown dust
and sand called "Rocknest." The site lies in a relatively flat part of Gale
Crater still miles away from the rover's main destination on the slope of a
mountain called Mount Sharp. The rover's laboratory includes the Sample
Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
instrument. SAM used three methods to analyze gases given off from the
dusty sand when it was heated in a tiny oven. One class of substances SAM
checks for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be
ingredients for life.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we
will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM
Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md.

Curiosity's APXS instrument and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on
the rover's arm confirmed Rocknest has chemical-element composition and
textural appearance similar to sites visited by earlier NASA Mars rovers
Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity's team selected Rocknest as the first scooping site because it
has fine sand particles suited for scrubbing interior surfaces of the arm's
sample-handling chambers. Sand was vibrated inside the chambers to remove
residue from Earth. MAHLI close-up images of Rocknest show a dust-coated
crust one or two sand grains thick, covering dark, finer sand.

"Active drifts on Mars look darker on the surface," said MAHLI Principal
Investigator Ken Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. "This
is an older drift that has had time to be inactive, letting the crust form
and dust accumulate on it."

CheMin's examination of Rocknest samples found the composition is about
half common volcanic minerals and half non-crystalline materials such as
glass. SAM added information about ingredients present in much lower
concentrations and about ratios of isotopes. Isotopes are different forms
of the same element and can provide clues about environmental changes. The
water seen by SAM does not mean the drift was wet. Water molecules bound to
grains of sand or dust are not unusual, but the quantity seen was higher
than anticipated.

SAM tentatively identified the oxygen and chlorine compound perchlorate.
This is a reactive chemical previously found in arctic Martian soil by
NASA's Phoenix Lander. Reactions with other chemicals heated in SAM formed
chlorinated methane compounds -- one-carbon organics that were detected by
the instrument. The chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the
carbon may be of Earth origin, carried by Curiosity and detected by SAM's
high sensitivity design.

"We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift,"
said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The synergies of the instruments and
richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the
mission's main science destination on Mount Sharp."

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether
areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, a division of Caltech,
manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington,
and built Curiosity.

For more information about Curiosity and other Mars missions, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .
Dwayne Brown Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

Nancy Neal Jones
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-0039
nancy.n.jones at nasa.gov
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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