This story is getting plenty of buzz and apparently we will have towait a couple of weeks for confirmation. The point is obviously thatsome folks are excited. Most likely we have an unambiguous methanesignature.
Anyway it must be good news vis a vis the existence of biologicallife on Mars. Otherwise we are looking at rocks and minerals we knowand understand or rocks and minerals we do not understand. Welcometo prospecting.
Curiosity has been very productive and I expect plenty more. This isa strongly disturbed area promising plenty of interesting geology.
Mars Mystery: HasCuriosity Rover Made Big Discovery?
by Mike Wall,SPACE.com Senior WriterDate: 20 November 2012
http://www.space.com/18565-mars-rover-curiosity-discovery-mystery.html
NASA's Mars roverCuriosity has apparently made a discovery "for the historybooks," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the newRed Planet find may be, media reports suggest.
The discovery was madeby Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reportedtoday (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it'scapable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containingbuilding blocks of life as we know it.
SAM apparently spottedsomething interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge roboticarm delivered to the instrument recently.
"This data isgonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientistJohn Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It'slooking really good."
The rover team won'tbe ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPRreported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results.Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come outat the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takesplace Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.
The $2.5 billionCuriosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5,kicking off a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever beencapable of supporting microbial life.
The car-size robot carries 10 different instruments to aid in itsquest, but SAM is the rover's heart, taking up more than half of itsscience payload by weight.
In addition toanalyzing soil samples, SAM also takes the measure of Red Planet air.Many scientists are keen to see if Curiosity detects any methane,which is produced by many lifeforms here on Earth. A SAM analysis ofCuriosity's first few sniffs found no definitive trace of thegas in the Martian atmosphere, but the rover will keeplooking.
Curiosity begandriving again Friday (Nov. 16) after spending six weeks testing itssoil-scooping gear at a site called "Rocknest." The roverwill soon try out its rock-boring drill for the first time on the RedPlanet, scientists have said.
Mars Mystery:Here’s What We Know
NASA says itsCuriosity rover has made a discovery on Mars, but isn't saying more.Clues offer some educated guesses about what NASA's found.
By J.Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeekNovember 21, 201212:10 PM
http://www.informationweek.com/government/information-management/mars-mystery-heres-what-we-know/240142491
Results of soil sample analysis by NASA's Curiosity rover may haveyielded a significant scientific discovery on Mars, possibly oforganic compounds, but until NASA makes a more detailed announcementat a conference in early December, the public will have to siftthrough available clues.
In the meantime,Curiosity will take a break over the Thanksgiving holiday, duringwhich scientists will use the rover's camera to look for futureroutes and targets for investigation.
"This data is onefor the history books," NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientistJohn Grotzinger recently told National Public Radio, while addingthat he could not divulge more until scientists had a better chanceto vet the data. Hypotheses have ranged from a discovery of complexorganic matter to chemicals indicating the presence of water.
According toGrotzinger, NASA's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) was the tool thatfacilitated the discovery. SAM is a hypersensitive set of threeinstruments -- a quadrupole mass spectrometer, a gaschromatograph and a tunable laser spectrometer -- that process andanalyze soil samples in search of compounds containing carbon andother elements associated with life.
SAM is the largesttool on Curiosity, weighing in at 88 pounds. The tool's massspectrometer separates compounds and elements by mass to helpscientists identify them, while the chromatograph vaporizes samplesand analyzes the resulting gasses, and the laser spectrometermeasures isotopes of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in gasses."Because thesecompounds are essential to life as we know it, their relativeabundances will be an essential piece of information for evaluatingwhether Mars could have supported life in the past or present,"NASA says in an online description of SAM's mission online.
NASA sent SAM to Marswith five specific goals, all of which aim to address questions abouthabitability on Mars. These goals include surveying carbon sources onMars, searching for organic compounds, revealing the state ofisotopes on Mars that are important for life as we know it on Earth,determining Mars' atmospheric composition and measuring other gasesin order to "better constrain models of atmospheric and climaticevolution."
Curiosity recentlyspent six weeks testing its soil sampling tools at a sand dune thatNASA named Rocknest. The $2.5 billion Curiosity is on a broadertwo-year mission to investigate Mars' present or past habitabilityafter landing in August in the Red Planet's Gale Crater -- a sitethat, according to NASA analysis of satellite imagery, washistorically covered with water.
NASA first used SAM'ssoil sample tool with soil from Rocknest on November 9, and followedthat sampling with two days of analysis on the sample. In a statementissued November 13, SAM principal investigator Paul Mahaffy indicatedthat the sample yielded "good data," but did not tip hishand as to what that data portended.
While the discovery oforganic compounds would be significant, as previous missions have notfound them on Mars, NASA officials have previously said in interviewsthat they expect that Curiosity would find organic materials. Thepresence of organics would not necessarily indicate past or presentpresence of life on Mars: For example, organics can be found onmeteorites, and methane can be produced by abiotic processes.
NASA plans to announcethe news at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union,which takes place December 3 to 7 in San Francisco. NASA scientistshave already used SAM to analyze Mars' atmosphere, finding littleevidence of methane in the atmosphere despite an earlier false alarm.
More than half offederal agencies are saving money with cloud computing, but security,compatibility, and skills present huge problems, according to oursurvey. Also in the Cloud Business Case issue ofInformationWeek Government: President Obama's record on IT strategyis long on vision but short on results. (Free registration required.)
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