[Vision2020] Dec. 3-7 Will Reveal Mar's Curiosity's Secret "Historic" Breakthrough: Speculation Centers on Organic Molecules

[Ted Moffett]

   - Adam Mann <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/author/adammann930/>
   <adammann930 at gmail.com>
   - November 20, 2012 |
   - 6:28 pm |
   - Categories: Space <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/category/space/>

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/curiosity-historic-news-organics/

Much of the internet
is<http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/11/earthshaking-news-coming-from-nasa-on-mars/>
buzzing
over <http://mashable.com/2012/11/20/curiosity-mars-discovery/> upcoming
“big news” from NASA’s Curiosity rover, but the space agency’s scientists
are keeping quiet about the details.

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John
Grotzinger <http://www.gps.caltech.edu/people/grotz/profile> of Caltech,
who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of
Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at
Mars<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/instruments-mars-rover/>(SAM)
instrument.

“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really
good,” Grotzinger told
NPR<http://www.npr.org/2012/11/20/165513016/big-news-from-mars-rover-scientists-mum-for-now>in
an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a
vast
array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure
the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and
nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.

The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through
e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results
during the 2012
American Geophysical Union meeting <http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/> in
San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7. Because it’s so potentially earth-shaking,
Grotzinger said the team remains cautious and is checking and
double-checking their results. But while NASA is refusing to discuss the
findings with anyone outside the team, especially reporters, other
scientists are free to speculate.

“If it’s going in the history books, organic material is what I expect,”
says planetary scientist Peter
Smith<http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/resources/faculty/faculty.php?nom=Smith>
from
the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Smith is
formerly the principal investigator on a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix
lander <http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php>, which touched down at
the Martian North Pole in 2008. “It may be just a hint, but even a hint
would be exciting.”

Smith added that he is not in contact with anyone from the Curiosity team
about their results and offered his assessment as an informed outside
researcher.

Organic molecules are those that contain carbon and are potential
indicators of life. During its mission, Phoenix heated a sample of soil to
search for organics but these efforts were stymied by the presence of
perchlorates, chemical salts that sit in the Martian soil. Perchlorates
react to heat and destroy any complex organic molecules, leaving only
carbon dioxide, which is abundant in the Martian atmosphere.

The Viking landers <http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/viking/>, which
explored opposite sides of Mars in the late 1970s, also conducted a search
for organic molecules and came up empty. For decades afterward, astronomers
considered Mars to be a dead planet, with conditions not very conducive to
life. After the results from Phoenix, scientists realized that perchlorates
were probably messing with those earlier findings as well, and could
account for their negative outcome.

Curiosity’s suite of laboratory instruments are able to slowly heat a
sample in a way that doesn’t trigger the perchlorates. They can also weigh
any molecules present, determining how much carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen
they are made from. Simple organic compounds wouldn’t be completely
shocking, said Smith, since these probably come from meteorites originating
in the asteroid belt and probably are around on present-day Mars. But they
would indicate that the building blocks for life are present on Mars and
might only need the addition of water, which Mars had in the past, in order
to produce organisms.

“If they found signatures of a very complex organic type, that would be
astounding,” said Smith, since they would likely be leftovers from complex
life forms that once roamed Mars. But the odds of finding such a startling
result in a sample of sand scooped from a random dune are “very, very low,”
Smith said.

Smith cautioned against speculating too much, since rumors have a way of
spreading rapidly when it comes to any discussion of potential life on
Mars. During his tenure on the Phoenix mission, his team was evaluating the
interesting perchlorate results, which they kept secret during analysis.
Rumors got out and then became worse when an unsubstantiated report claimed
a member of his team meeting was meeting with the White House.

“When you keep things secret, people start thinking all kinds of crazy
things,” he said.

*Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science
Systems<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16239.html>
*

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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