The Curiosity rover has detected organic molecules in ancient rocks on Mars.

Mojave drill site on Mars
Curiosity does a test drill into the Mojave site. Chemical tests reveal that samples from the Mojave and Confidence Hills drill sites contain organic molecules.
NASA / JPL-Caltech

Planetary exploration can be a long, hard slog, full of discoveries that take time to weave together. Since landing on Mars in 2012, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity has uncovered clays, sedimentary rocks formed in streams, and evidence that a lake and life-friendly conditions existed some 3½ billion years ago in Gale Crater. The rover has also detected hints of a seasonal methane cycle.

But scientists have wanted something else from Curiosity, too: conclusive evidence of multiple types of organic compounds. Organics are those than contain carbon and hydrogen — which describes the vast majority of carbon-bearing molecules (including methane, the simplest organic). Organics appear all sorts of places in the solar system, from comets and meteorites to Saturn’s moon Titan. Despite the provocative name, they don’t have to be made by life; abiotic processes create them, too. But life does make and use some of them, including sugars and amino acids. So searches for extraterrestrial life, whether extant or extinct, often focus on organics.

In the June 8th Science, members of the Curiosity team report the conclusive detection of a seasonal methane cycle and the presence of several organic compounds in ancient mudstones. Neither of these means we’ve found Martian life, but they do make the question of whether it ever existed a more reasonable one to ask.

The studies used different instruments inside Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), a microwave-sized lab package that makes up a large chunk of the rover’s body. (You can find a detailed explanation of SAM in this 2012 blog by Emily Lakdawalla.) For the mudstone study, Jennifer Eigenbrode (NASA Goddard) and colleagues heated rock powder to immensely high temperatures — nearly 900°C, or 1,600°F. By going to such high temperatures, the team avoided the ambiguity of a 2015 result that found organics that had been produced by interacting with the nasty perchlorate salt on the Martian surface, instead of clearly identifying what was originally in the rock.

martian methane cycle
This illustration shows methane levels detected by Curiosity (points) along with the ways in which the gas might find its way to the Martian surface from below. Potential methane sources include methanogenesis by microbes, ultraviolet degradation of organics, or water-rock chemistry. The methane could be later destroyed by atmospheric photochemistry or surface reactions, as examples. Seasons refer to the northern hemisphere.
NASA / JPL-Caltech

As the pulverized mudstone heats, it generates gases, either because molecules in the rock are undergoing chemical reactions or because they’re breaking down. These gases travel down a pipeline and are ionized, sniffed, and “weighed” to determine their molecular masses and specific components, revealing their chemical identities.

Based on these data, the researchers determined that the mudstones contained organic compounds made of carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur. The sulfur might explain why the organics in these samples, which come from the Murray formation at the base of Aeolis Mons, were less degraded than those in other rock formations tested earlier. Sulfur is more vulnerable to oxidation than carbon is, so it acts as a “sacrificial element,” Eigenbrode says, serving as a chemical victim in Mars’s oxidizing environment in place of the carbon. The same process happens on Earth, when the presence of sulfur protects coal and shale deposits, she adds.

If the organics Curiosity tested were from life, they’ve been altered an awful lot: They don’t show the diversity of molecules or the structural patterns usually created biologically.

A separate paper by Christopher Webster (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and colleagues details the methane cycle. Curiosity has detected methane before, including a startling spike back in 2013. The new result is based on detections via two methods that reveal a clear seasonal trend, with a peak in the northern hemisphere’s late summer. (Gale lies just south of the equator.)

In previous work, planetary scientists had suggested that the methane might be from the breakdown of meteorite debris by ultraviolet sunlight, which would be the most likely source of carbon. But this time the team says that scenario doesn’t match the levels they’re seeing. Instead, the researchers think the gas is released from the subsurface, perhaps via fissures in the rock. Some process that’s related to surface temperature must be involved in the release, but the researchers can’t say much more than that.

 

References:

Jennifer L. Eigenbrode et al. “Organic Matter Preserved in 3-billion-year-old Mudstones at Gale Crater, Mars.” Science. June 8, 2018.

Christopher R. Webster et al. “Background Levels of Methane in Mars’ Atmosphere Show Strong Seasonal Variations.” Science. June 8, 2018.

Inge Loes ten Kate. “Organic Molecules on Mars.” Science. June 8, 2018. (Perspective piece.)

Emily Lakdawalla. “More Than You Probably Wanted to Know about Curiosity’s SAM Instrument.” The Planetary Society. November 30, 2012.

 

Comments


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Ransom

June 8, 2018 at 7:29 pm

As they said, it most likely abiotic methane. They've been finding methane in the Mars atmosphere for several years now, so it's not surprising to find it in this lake bed. When they do find remains of life on another planet or moon, it will most likely be Earth life that was blasted off our own planet by an impact and carried to Mars (or the Moon) where it's waiting to be discovered. NASA should put resources towards finding the remains of ancient Earth life on the Moon, where it is bound to be more plentiful than Mars. It would be fascinating to have pristine ancient Earth fossils that are no longer available on our own planet due to geological activity.

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June 9, 2018 at 1:55 am

I will greatly appreciate if one could provide us a reference where
the apparent luminous flux of reference-star Vega on the Earth has magnitude
2.56x10^-6 lumen per square meter.
I could locate only one reference
P Organ, Teacher Resource Bank: GCE Physics A Astrophysics (Assessment & Qualification Alliance, Manchester, 2009) p. 22

A second reference will make us more comfortable.
This has been cited by me in my paper
APPARENT MAGNITUDE OF EARTHSHINE: A SIMPLE CALCULATION
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325247291_Apparent_magnitude_scale_incandescent_lamps

Regards, D. C. Agrawal Prof of Physics Department of Farm Engineering Banaras Hindu University Varanasi 221005, India website: http://www.bhu.ac.in/IAS/farm_ engineering/faculty/DCAgrawal. pdf Email: [email protected] Mobile: 09936270407

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