Hello Space Fans!
I'm Scott Lewis and welcome to another edition of SpaceFan News!
Well there's been one major thing in news this week, and that is MARS!
Using a myriad of scientific instruments, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover
set forth on its mission to find an environment that is or was hospitable for life.
One of the primary things needed for a planetary body to harbor life is the ability to have
liquid water on the surface.
NASA announced that results of tests from the soil at Rocknest provided evidence of
H2O in the surface soil.
Though it had been known that there is a significant amount of water underneath the surface of
Mars, a recent set of papers published in the journal Science reveal that about 2% of
the surface soil is made up of water.
This was found by first scooping up the wind-swept soil on the surface using the tool called
CHIMRA.
CHIMRA stands for Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis.
The reason why the loose soil was chosen is because since it's being blown about the surface
and is not particular to one area but more of a general region.
After the sample was scooped, it's filtered through a sieve and placed into the SAM instrument
which is the Sample Analysis at Mars.
SAM is one awesome piece of machinery, but to be more precise, it's more like a full
science laboratory that we've sent to another planet.
The soil sample is then heated to over 800 degrees Celsius and put through rigorous tests
with the gas chromotograph, mass spectrometer and tunable laser spectrometer to establish
the identification of the chemistry of the regolith.
Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen and Sulfer compounds were found, as well as water and carbonates—which
can only form in the presence of water.
Perchlorates were also discovered, which are salts derived from perchloric acid.
These are highly toxic to humans, but different extremophiles have been known to use it as
an energy source here on Earth.
Now these results that were published in Science are just the first of the experiments done
with MSL, which means that we've got so many new discoveries that we can find using the
Curiosity Rover.
Now that we know that we can pull water out of the surface, what does this mean?
Will humans be able to drink it?
I personally don't think that it's a great potential source of potable water, but it
is extremely exciting news when it comes to possible life on Mars either now or in the
past.
If we're looking for water on Mars to drink, I think it'd be far more efficient to find
a good sour to dig down deep, instead of expending a LOT of energy to break down soil to extract
the water from it.
If you want to learn more about SAM and how it works, I totally recommend going to JPL's
website where there are some interactive images and graphs to actually see what the instrumentation
does and how it processes it.
It appears that we're finding geology on Mars that's very similar to that on Earth!
On particular rock was studied in Gale Crater called Jacob Matijevic (Mateejavick), which
is named after the MSL surface operations systems chief who passed away two weeks after
curiosity landed.
This pyramid-shape rock is about a half-meter tall and was one of the first rocks encountered
after the landing of MSL.
A closer look at this rock reveals that it's a basaltic igneous rock which is similar to
rocks that form on a lava flow here on Earth.
Like this that I got off of Kilauea in Hawaii.
Now since there wasn't much visible strata in the rock, scientists came to the concolusion
that the chemical composition would be relatively uniform and so they unleashed Curiosity's
ChemCam upon it.
I love shooting lasers at the surface of other planets.
With the further analysis of ChemCam and the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, the geologists
discovered that it's actually a rare type of terrestrial igneous rock known as mugearite.
In fact, it's so rare that if a rock like this were to be found on the surface of Earth,
most scientists would believe that it was not of Earthly origin.
Mugearite was formed tens of kilometers beneath the surface and when compared to the samples
we have here on Earth, has a highly concentrated dissolved water content.
Now there's no reason to believe that this type of rock is commonplace on the surface
of Mars, but it is an extremely exciting because of its odd composition.
They'll continue their mission as planned, but further samples of mugearits would provide
further insight into the geologic evolution of Mars.
Well that's it for this week, Space Fans!
Thank you all for watching.
And as always, keep looking up!