No Methane on Mars?

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The complete lack of methane pretty well disposes of the hope ofpresent production. The dream of any life is now restricted to a wellsealed artificial habitat which could exist.
Of course, the surface of Mars must be highly reactive to straymethane gas since there is none to readily detect. We may then bedealing with an artifact of the special conditions provided by thesurface itself.
Did anyone think to take a little methane along to toss in a testtube with some dust?
For sure though, this planet must not be out-gassing methane. Iactually find that very surprising. I suspect that it can not betrue so something else is plausibly happening here.
Life on Mars?Non-Detection of Methane Suggests No Modern-Day Microbes
By Adam MannNovember 2, 2012 | 

Hypothetical sourcesand sinks of methane on Mars. The simple organic gas could beproduced by microbes or active geological processes. So far,Curiosity has not detected methane in the Martian atmosphere.


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/no-methane-curiosity/

NASA’s Curiosityrover has sniffed the Martian atmosphere for methane and, so far,turned up empty. The much-anticipated measurement strikes a blowto the hope that previous hints of methane could have been anindication of life on Mars.
Methane, made of onecarbon and four hydrogen atoms, is one of the simplest organiccompounds. On Earth, 90 to 95 percent of methane in the atmospherecomes from biological activity, mainly methanogenicbacteria and cow farts. Geological activity such aswater-rock interactions could have also produced the methane, whichwould also have overturned astronomers’ view that Mars isgeologically dead in the modern age. Curiosity’s latestmeasurements seem to refute both ideas.
“So far we have nodefinitive detection of methane,” said chemist Chris Webster,instrument lead on Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laserspectrometer, during at NASA press conference today. SAM is like therover’s “nose,” able to test the Martian atmosphere anddetermine what chemicals are present.
In 2009, MichaelMumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Marylandused an Earth-based telescope and found hotspots of methane thatappeared seasonally. Methane is quickly destroyed by ultravioletradiation in the Martian atmosphere, usually after only a few hundredyears, so the gas could not be left over from some era millions ofyears ago. The detection excited much of the scientific communitybecause these hotspots could have been areas where undergroundMartian microbes were alive on modern-day Mars.
Later measurements byboth Mumma and other scientists cast doubt on these methanedetections, and one of Curiosity’s main tasks has been to provideevidence one way or another. The probe used its Tunable LaserSpectrometer (TLS) and found the atmosphere is mainly composed ofcarbon dioxide, with trace amounts of argon, nitrogen, and oxygen.

Despite the lack ofcurrent detections, Curiosity’s science team was quick to point outthat future measurements may yet turn up methane. The gas could beproduced only during some seasons or it could be destroyed tooquickly right now for Curiosity to find it.
“SAM will continueto search for methane, to determine if methane does vary with time,”said space scientist Sushil Atreya, co-investigator on the SAMinstrument, during the NASA briefing. “So stay tuned, the story ofmethane has just begun.”


In the meantime,Curiosity’s latest measurements could bolster the case that ancientMars was a world conducive to life. SAM sniffed out differentelement isotopes in the Martian atmosphere and determinedthat the planet lost much of its atmosphere over millions of years.Curiosity found that lighter isotopes are in lower abundances in themodern atmosphere compared to measurements of the ancientatmosphere on Mars — which come from meteorites found on Earth thancontain trace samples of Mars gas. The findings indicate that as muchas half of the planet’s carbon dioxide could have floated off intospace over millions of years, meaning that perhaps Mars was oncewarmer.
“We are makingthese measurements more precisely” than previousanalysis on the Viking landers or other probes, said NASAgeochemist Laurie Leshin, co-investigator on SAM and AlphaParticle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instruments. Coupled withmeasurements of Martian rocks that Curiosity will take over thecourse of its mission, these findings could help unravel the complexhistory of gas, water, and soil on Mars.