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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: September 27, 2013 8:33:50 AM GMT-06:00
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Topsoil on Mars contains 2 percent water

Data from the Mars Curiosity rover indicated that the planet is missing methane, but does have water.

By CAROLINE LEE, UPI.com | Blog

 

Data from the Mars Curiosity rover indicated last week that the planet does not contain methane, a gas that is often an indicator of life.

 

But new data from NASA shows that the topsoil on Mars contains a surprisingly high amount of water.

 

Analysis of Mars had scientists believe there were ancient riverbeds on the surface and ice beneath the crust. The topsoil discovery, though, is critical for future manned missions.

 

"We now know there should be abundant, easily accessible water on Mars," said Laurie Leshin, Dean of Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "When we send people, they could scoop up the soil anywhere on the surface, heat it just a bit, and obtain water."

 

Scoops of soil were fed into Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) analytical suite, which allows the rover to identify chemical compounds.

 

"About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically," said Leshin.

 

Previous Mars rovers found evidence of ancient water there, but unlike the water just discovered, the water was extremely acidic.

 

The rover will continue analysis on Mars, and scientists believe that they will find evidence of organic compounds. So far, analyses have not returned evidence that organic compounds exist or have existed on Mars.

 

© 2013 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

 

 

Curiosity analysis shows Mars soil sample 2 percent water

 

TROY, N.Y., Sept. 26 (UPI) -- An analysis of one of the first soil samples taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity found a high percentage of water, U.S. researchers said.

 

"One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Laurie Leshin, dean of Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and lead author of one study focusing on analyzing the rover's samples.

 

"About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically," Leshin said in a release issued by RPI.

 

In the study, scientists used the Rover's scoop to collect dust, dirt, and finely grained soil and fed portions of it into Curiosity's instrument, Sample Analysis at Mars. Inside SAM, the dust, dirt, and fine soil were heated to 835 degrees Celsius.

 

The sample also released significant carbon dioxide, oxygen, and sulfur compounds when heated, researchers said.

 

Leshin said the sample was the first analyzed with the instruments on Curiosity.

 

"This is the first solid sample that we've analyzed with the instruments on Curiosity. It's the very first scoop of stuff that's been fed into the analytical suite. Although this is only the beginning of the story, what we've learned is substantial," said Leshin, who co-wrote "Volatile, Isotope and Organic Analysis of Martian Fines with the Mars Curiosity Rover." Thirty-four researchers, all members of the Mars Science Laboratory Science Team, contributed to the paper published in the journal Science.

 

"We now know there should be abundant, easily accessible water on Mars," Leshin said. "When we send people, they could scoop up the soil anywhere on the surface, heat it just a bit, and obtain water."

 

© 2013 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

 

 

Curiosity's SAM Instrument Finds Water and More in Surface Sample

September 26, 2013

 

The first scoop of soil analyzed by the analytical suite in the belly of NASA's Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain several percent water by weight. The results were published today in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the Curiosity mission.

 

"One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Laurie Leshin, lead author of one paper and dean of the School Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically." The sample also released significant carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds when heated.

 

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on the surface of Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, charged with answering the question: "Could Mars have once harbored life?" To do that, Curiosity is the first rover on Mars to carry equipment for gathering and processing samples of rock and soil. One of those instruments was employed in the current research: the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which includes a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer. These tools enable SAM to identify a wide range of chemical compounds and determine the ratios of different isotopes of key elements.

 

"This work not only demonstrates that SAM is working beautifully on Mars, but also shows how SAM fits into Curiosity's powerful and comprehensive suite of scientific instruments," said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for SAM at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "By combining analyses of water and other volatiles from SAM with mineralogical, chemical and geological data from Curiosity's other instruments, we have the most comprehensive information ever obtained on Martian surface fines. These data greatly advance our understanding surface processes and the action of water on Mars."

 

Thirty-four researchers, all members of the Mars Science Laboratory Science Team, contributed to the paper.

 

In this study, scientists used the rover's scoop to collect dust, dirt and finely grained soil from a sandy patch known as Rocknest. Researchers fed portions of the fifth scoop into SAM. Inside SAM, the "fines"—the dust, dirt and fine soil—were heated to 1,535 degrees F (835 C). 

 

Baking the sample also revealed a compound containing chlorine and oxygen, likely chlorate or perchlorate, previously found near the north pole on Mars. Finding such compounds at Curiosity's equatorial site suggests they could be distributed more globally. The analysis also suggests the presence of carbonate materials, which form in the presence of water.

 

In addition to determining the amount of the major gases released, SAM also analyzed ratios of isotopes of hydrogen and carbon in the released water and carbon dioxide. Isotopes are variants of the same chemical element with different numbers of neutrons, and therefore different atomic weights. SAM found that the ratio of some isotopes in the soil is similar to the ratio found in atmospheric samples analyzed earlier, indicating that the surface soil has interacted heavily with the atmosphere.

 

"The isotopic ratios, including hydrogen-to-deuterium ratios and carbon isotopes, tend to support the idea that as the dust is moving around the planet, it's reacting with some of the gases from the atmosphere," Leshin said.

 

SAM can also search for trace levels of organic compounds. Although several simple organic compounds were detected in the experiments at Rocknest, they aren't clearly Martian in origin. Instead, it is likely that they formed during the high-temperature experiments, when the heat decomposed perchlorates in the Rocknest samples, releasing oxygen and chlorine that then reacted with terrestrial organics already present in the SAM instrument.

 

A related paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, details the findings of perchlorates and other chlorine-bearing compounds in the Rocknest sample. This paper is led by Daniel Glavin, a Mars Science Laboratory Science Team member at Goddard.  

 

Glavin notes that SAM has the ability to perform another kind of experiment to address the question of whether organic molecules are present in the Martian samples. The SAM suite includes nine fluid-filled cups which hold chemicals that can react with organic molecules if present in the soil samples. "Because these reactions occur at low temperatures, the presence of perchlorates will not inhibit the detection of Martian organic compounds," said Glavin.

 

The combined results shed light on the composition of the planet's surface, while offering direction for future research.

 

"Mars has kind of a global layer, a layer of surface soil that has been mixed and distributed by frequent dust storms. So a scoop of this stuff is basically a microscopic Mars rock collection," said Leshin. "If you mix many grains of it together, you probably have an accurate picture of typical Martian crust. By learning about it in any one place you're learning about the entire planet."

 

Nancy Neal-Jones and Elizabeth Zubritsky

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

301-286-0039 / 301-614-5438

nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.zubritsky@nasa.gov

 

Guy Webster

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-6278

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

 

Mary Martialay

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

518-276-2146

martim12@rpi.edu

 

 

 

26-Sep-2013

Science

 

NASA Mars rover Curiosity finds water in first sample of planet surface

The first scoop of soil analyzed by the analytical suite in the belly of NASA's Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain several percent water by weight. The results were published today in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the Curiosity mission. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Dean of Science Laurie Leshin is the study's lead author.

 

Contact: Mary Martialay

martim12@rpi.edu

518-951-5650

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/rpi-nmr092013.php

 

 

26-Sep-2013

Science

 

Water for future Mars astronauts?

Within its first three months on Mars, NASA's Curiosity Rover saw a surprising diversity of soils and sediments along a half-kilometer route that tell a complex story about the gradual desiccation of the Red Planet. Perhaps most notable among findings from the ChemCam team is that all of the dust and fine soil contains small amounts of water.

 

Contact: James E. Rickman

jamesr@lanl.gov

505-665-9203

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/danl-wff092613.php

 

 

Curiosity Rover Makes Big Water Discovery in Mars Dirt, a 'Wow Moment'

by Mike Wall, Senior Writer   |   September 26, 2013 02:01pm ET

 

Future Mars explorers may be able to get all the water they need out of the red dirt beneath their boots, a new study suggests.

 

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains about 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

 

"For me, that was a big 'wow' moment," Leshin told SPACE.com. "I was really happy when we saw that there's easily accessible water here in the dirt beneath your feet. And it's probably true anywhere you go on Mars." [The Search for Water on Mars (Photos)]

 

The new study is one of five papers published in the journal Science today (Sept. 26) that report what researchers have learned about Martian surface materials from the work Curiosity did during its first 100 days on the Red Planet.

 

Soaking up atmospheric water

 

Curiosity touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater in August 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life. It achieved that goal in March, when it found that a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

 

But Curiosity did quite a bit of science work before getting to Yellowknife Bay. Leshin and her colleagues looked at the results of Curiosity's first extensive Mars soil analyses, which the 1-ton rover performed on dirt that it scooped up at a sandy site called Rocknest in November 2012.

 

Using its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, Curiosity heated this dirt to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit (835 degrees Celsius), and then identified the gases that boiled off. SAM saw significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds — and lots of water on Mars.

 

SAM also determined that the soil water is rich in deuterium, a "heavy" isotope of hydrogen that contains one neutron and one proton (as opposed to "normal" hydrogen atoms, which have no neutrons). The water in Mars' thin air sports a similar deuterium ratio, Leshin said.

 

"That tells us that the dirt is acting like a bit of a sponge and absorbing water from the atmosphere," she said.

 

Some bad news for manned exploration

 

SAM detected some organic compounds in the Rocknest sample as well — carbon-containing chemicals that are the building blocks of life here on Earth. But as mission scientists reported late last year, these are simple, chlorinated organics that likely have nothing to do with Martian life. [The Hunt for Martian Life: A Photo Timeline]

 

Instead, Leshin said, they were probably produced when organics that hitched a ride from Earth reacted with chlorine atoms released by a toxic chemical in the sample called perchlorate.

 

Perchlorate is known to exist in Martian dirt; NASA's Phoenix lander spotted it near the planet's north pole in 2008. Curiosity has now found evidence of it near the equator, suggesting that the chemical is common across the planet. (Indeed, observations by a variety of robotic Mars explorers indicate that Red Planet dirt is likely similar from place to place, distributed in a global layer across the surface, Leshin said.)

 

The presence of perchlorate is a challenge that architects of future manned Mars missions will have to overcome, Leshin said.

 

"Perchlorate is not good for people. We have to figure out, if humans are going to come into contact with the soil, how to deal with that," she said.

 

"That's the reason we send robotic explorers before we send humans — to try to really understand both the opportunities and the good stuff, and the challenges we need to work through," Leshin added.

 

A wealth of discoveries

 

The four other papers published in Science today report exciting results as well.

 

For example, Curiosity's laser-firing ChemCam instrument found a strong hydrogen signal in fine-grained Martian soils along the rover's route, reinforcing the SAM data and further suggesting that water is common in dirt across the planet (since such fine soils are globally distributed).

 

Another study reveals more intriguing details about a rock Curiosity studied in October 2012. This stone — which scientists dubbed "Jake Matijevic" in honor of a mission team member who died two weeks after the rover touched down — is a type of volcanic rock never before seen on Mars.

 

However, rocks similar to Jake Matijevic are commonly observed here on Earth, especially on oceanic islands and in rifts where the planet's crust is thinning out.

 

"Of all the Martian rocks, this one is the most Earth-like. It's kind of amazing," said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "What it indicates is that the planet is more evolved than we thought it was, more differentiated."

 

The five new studies showcase the diversity and scientific value of Gale Crater, Grotzinger said. They also highlight how well Curiosity's 10 science instruments have worked together, returning huge amounts of data that will keep the mission team busy for years to come.

 

"The amount of information that comes out of this rover just blows me away, all the time," Grotzinger told SPACE.com. "We're getting better at using Curiosity, and she just keeps telling us more and more. One year into the mission, we still feel like we're drinking from a fire hose."

 

The road to Mount Sharp

 

The pace of discovery could pick up even more. This past July, Curiosity left the Yellowknife Bay area and headed for Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky from Gale Crater's center.

 

Mount Sharp has been Curiosity's main destination since before the rover's November 2011 launch. Mission scientists want the rover to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the terrain's many layers along the way.

 

"As we go through the rock layers, we're basically looking at the history of ancient environments and how they may be changing," Grotzinger said. "So what we'll really be able to do for the first time is get a relative chronology of some substantial part of Martian history, which should be pretty cool."

 

Curiosity has covered about 20 percent of the planned 5.3-mile (8.5 km) trek to Mount Sharp. The rover, which is doing science work as it goes, may reach the base of the mountain around the middle of next year, Grotzinger said.

 

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