Daily Archives: May 18, 2023

A cute new photo courtesy of the Mars rover Curiosity shows a miniature book-shaped rock nestled in the soil of the Gale Crater.

The shape is the result of an interplay of wind, waterand the human brain. While many of the rock shapes on Mars hint at a dynamic past, says mineralogist Susanne Schwenzer of the Open University in England, the rocks often objectively look like plain, rounded pebbles. A few, though, remind the human eye of familiar objects. For instance, the Curiosity rover recently captured images of rocks that look like jagged shark teeth and delicate corals.

The human propensity to see familiar objects in ambiguous patterns is called pareidolia. Famously, in 1976 a photo taken from the Viking I spacecraft exemplified this phenomenon on a large scale. The image seemed to show an eerie face peering up from Marss surface. The Face on Mars became a pop culture sensation and fuel for conspiracy theories about alien monuments. Later, higher-resolution photographs with fewer shadows showed a pretty plain mesa.

Curiosity captured the picture of the book rock on April 15. Its a tiny feature, just 2.5 centimeters (about one inch) long. The origin of this miniature sculpture likely stretches back some four billion years, when the sediments that make up the base of Gale Crater were being deposited, Schwenzer says. At the time, the region hosted liquid water that traveled through pores in the rocks, depositing minerals in some spots and dissolving them away from others. This leads to uneven properties within rocks, Schwenzer says, so that when the rocks erode to the point they are on the planets surface and the wind whips against them, they dont wear away evenly. The softer parts weather away quicker, she says.

In the case of the book rock, an ancient fracture might have created the sheetlike page portion of the formation, Schwenzer says. When rocks crack, either because of strain from sediments layered on top of them or because of meteorite strikes, fluids can move into those cracks and deposit new minerals. If those minerals are harder than the surrounding rock, theyll remain after the rest of rock weathers away.

You have an at least three-step process, Schwenzer says. Youve got the rock, youve got the formation of that harder part, and then you have the weathering.

Gale Crater went through wet and dry periods for the first billion or so years of its existence. The last time liquid water flowed in this region was likely about 2.6 billion years ago, Schwenzer says, with wind taking over all of the sculpting since.

Excerpt from:

What Created This Mini Book-Shaped Rock on Mars? - Scientific American

Scientists think that these bands of rocks may have been formed by a very fast, deep river the first of its kind evidence has been found for on Mars. NASAs Perseverance Mars rover captured this scene at a location nicknamed Skrinkle Haven using its Mastcam-Z camera between February 28 and March 9, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Evidence left in rocks is leading scientists to rethink what watery environments looked like on ancient Mars.

New images from NASAs Perseverance rover reveal evidence of a powerful river on Mars, possibly deeper and faster-moving than previously known. The images depict sedimentary rock layers with coarse sediment grains and cobbles, indicating a high-energy river system. Understanding these Martian watery environments is crucial for the search for ancient microbial life and expands our knowledge of Mars past.

New images taken by NASAs Perseverance rover may show signs of what was once a rollicking river on Mars, one that was deeper and faster-moving than scientists have ever seen evidence for in the past. The river was part of a network of waterways that flowed into Jezero Crater, the area the rover has been exploring since landing more than two years ago.

Understanding these watery environments could help scientists in their efforts to seek out signs of ancient microbial life that may have been preserved in Martian rock.

Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 820 feet (250 meters) tall and features curving layers suggestive of flowing water. One question scientists want to answer is whether that water flowed in relatively shallow streams closer to what NASAs Curiosity rover has found evidence of in Gale Crater or a more powerful river system.

This illustration depicts NASAs Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. NASAs Perseverance rover has discovered potential evidence of a previously unknown, powerful river system on Mars. Images captured reveal coarse sediment grains and cobbles, suggesting a high-energy river once flowed into the Jezero Crater, which may hold clues to Mars ancient microbial life. Credit: NASA

Stitched together from hundreds of images captured by Perseverances Mastcam-Z instrument, two new mosaics suggest the latter, revealing important clues: coarse sediment grains and cobbles.

Those indicate a high-energy river thats truckin and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily its able to move larger pieces of material, said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which operates the Perseverance rover. With a background in studying Earth-based rivers, Ives has spent the last six months analyzing images of the Red Planets surface. Its been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar, Ives said.

Years ago, scientists noticed a series of curving bands of layered rock within Jezero Crater that they dubbed the curvilinear unit. They could see these layers from space but are finally able to see them up close, thanks to Perseverance.

One location within the curvilinear unit, nicknamed Skrinkle Haven, is captured in one of the new Mastcam-Z mosaics. Scientists are sure the curved layers here were formed by powerfully flowing water, but Mastcam-Zs detailed shots have left them debating what kind: a river such as the Mississippi, which winds snakelike across the landscape, or a braided river like Nebraskas Platte, which forms small islands of sediment called sandbars.

NASAs Perseverance Mars rover captured this mosaic of a hill nicknamed Pinestand. Scientists think the tall sedimentary layers stacked on top of one another here could have been formed by a deep, fast-moving river. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

When viewed from the ground, the curved layers appear arranged in rows that ripple out across the landscape. They could be the remnants of a rivers banks that shifted over time or the remnants of sandbars that formed in the river. The layers were likely much taller in the past. Scientists suspect that after these piles of sediment turned to rock, they were sandblasted by wind over the eons and carved down to their present size.

The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits, said Michael Lamb of Caltech, a river specialist and Perseverance science team collaborator. We do see deposits like this on Earth, but theyre never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers.

A second mosaic captured by Perseverance shows a separate location that is part of the curvilinear unit and about a quarter mile (450 meters) from Skrinkle Haven. Pinestand is an isolated hill bearing sedimentary layers that curve skyward, some as high as 66 feet (20 meters). Scientists think these tall layers may also have been formed by a powerful river, although theyre exploring other explanations, as well.

These layers are anomalously tall for rivers on Earth, Ives said. But at the same time, the most common way to create these kinds of landforms would be a river.

The team is continuing to study Mastcam-Zs images for additional clues. Theyre also peering below the surface, using the ground-penetrating radar instrument on Perseverance called RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment). What they learn from both instruments will contribute to an ever-expanding body of knowledge about Mars ancient, watery past.

Whats exciting here is weve entered a new phase of Jezeros history. And its the first time were seeing environments like this on Mars, said Perseverances deputy project scientist, Katie Stack Morgan of JPL. Were thinking about rivers on a different scale than we have before.

Perseverances mission on Mars primarily focuses on astrobiology, particularly hunting for evidence of ancient microbial life. The rovers tasks also include analyzing the planets geology and historical climate, preparing for future human exploration, and pioneering the collection and storage of Martian rock and regolith (a mix of broken rock and dust).

Future NASA missions, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), plan to send spacecraft to Mars to retrieve these secured samples. Once back on Earth, these samples will undergo thorough analysis.

The 2020 Mars Perseverance mission is a component of NASAs wider Moon to Mars exploration strategy. This includes the Artemis missions to the Moon, designed to lay the groundwork for future human expeditions to Mars.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), run by Caltech in Pasadena, California on behalf of NASA, is responsible for both the construction and operational management of the Perseverance rover.

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A Mighty Martian River? Latest Astonishing Discovery by NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover - SciTechDaily

More than a hundred years after geologists first observed how seismic waves traveled through Earth, theyve achieved another seismic first. This time, they measured core-transiting seismic waves moving through Mars. The InSight landers seismic instrument tracked shockwaves generated by an earthquake and an impact event. Their behavior revealed for the first time that Mars very likely has a liquid core. Its made of a single blob of molten iron alloy.

By comparison, Earths core is more of a combo plate. It has both a liquid outer core and a solid inner core. They contain mostly iron and nickel. The turbulent outer core is heated by radioactive decay and other processes. It also generates our planets magnetic field.

It turns out that Marss innards are a bit different from Earths. The Martian liquid iron core is also rich in sulfur, with smaller fractions of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. That mix of elements makes it much less dense than Earths core, and its more compressible.

According to Nicholas Schmerr of the University of Maryland and a member of a team that used InSight data to study Mars, the differences between Earth and Mars cores hint at different formation stories for each planet. You can think of it this way; the properties of a planets core can serve as a summary of how the planet formed and how it evolved dynamically over time. The end result of the formation and evolution processes can be either the generation or absence of life-sustaining conditions, he said. The uniqueness of Earths core allows it to generate a magnetic field that protects us from solar winds, allowing us to keep water. Mars core does not generate this protective shield, and so the planets surface conditions are hostile to life.

Interestingly, despite having a liquid iron core, Mars doesnt seem to have much of a global magnetic field. It probably did generate one in the past, however. Planetary scientists suspect that it existed because Marss rocks contain traces of magnetism from ancient times. That magnetic memory gets embedded in rock crystals as they cool in the presence of a magnetic field. That memory can last for millions or billions of years. On Earth, scientists use it to track the motions of our planets tectonic plates, for example. They also use it to monitor changes in Earths magnetic field over timea science called paleomagnetism.

Paleomagnetism studies of Mars rocks tell scientists about Marss magnetic field in the past. Although there isnt one there now, it probably once had one similar to Earths. University of Maryland associate professor of geology Vedran Lekic suggests that Mars changed from a planet with a potentially habitable environment, shielded by a magnetic field, to the more unfriendly place it is today.

What caused it to change? Conditions in the core might have played a role, along with other factors such as violent impacts, according to Lekic. Its like a puzzle in some ways, Lekic said. For example, there are small traces of hydrogen in Mars core. That means that there had to be certain conditions that allowed the hydrogen to be there, and we have to understand those conditions in order to understand how Mars evolved into the planet it is today.

No one has been able to directly image the Martian core. However, planetary scientists have made extensive models of what they think conditions are like there. The InSight seismic measurements confirm the accuracy of those models. This was a huge effort, involving state-of-the-art seismological techniques which have been honed on Earth, in conjunction with new results from mineral physicists and the insights from team members who simulate how planetary interiors change over time, noted Jessica Irving, a senior lecturer at Bristol University and part of the team analyzing the InSight results. But the work paid off, and we now know much more about whats happening inside the Martian core.

The team used data from InSight from a marsquake that occurred on August 25, 2021, and an impact that happened on September 18, 2021. They compared the time it took waves from each event to travel through Mars to waves that stayed in the mantle. Those measurements got combined with other seismic and geophysical measurements of the Red Planet. All that data gave the team enough information to estimate the density and compressibility of the material the waves traveled through. Thats how the researchers figured out that Mars most likely has this completely liquid core.

Lekic and Schmerr note that Mars gradually evolved to its current conditions, changing from a planet with a potentially habitable environment into an incredibly hostile one. Conditions in the interior play a key role in this evolution, as might violent impacts, according to the researchers. Studying the data from InSight and other missions will help them determine more about the conditions that existed in Marss ancient history to give it that core.

Even though the InSight mission ended in December 2022 after four years of seismic monitoring, were still analyzing the data that was collected, Lekic said. InSight will continue to influence how we understand the formation and evolution of Mars and other planets for years to come.

Scientists detect seismic waves traveling through Martian core for the first timeFirst Observations of Core-transiting Seismic Phases on MarsThe Far Side of Mars: Two Distant Marsquakes Detected by Insight

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Seismic Waves Help Map the Core of Mars for the First Time - Universe Today

The crust of Mars, its outermost planetary layer, is much thicker than the Earths crust or even the crust of the Moon. This is according to the latest study that has looked at the internal properties of Mars using the quake data collected by NASAs InSight in its over four years of activity.

The strongest Marsquake was recorded last year, now estimated to be a 4.6-magnitude tremor. It sent seismic waves through the Martian crust and deep into the planet. Scientists used those tremors, which traveled along the Martian surface circling the planet up to three times, to work out how thick the crust is.

The findings suggest that the crust averages between 42 and 56 kilometers (26 to 35 miles) thick. It is thinnest inside the Isidis impact basin, where it is roughly 10 kilometers (6 miles). The Tharsis province is where the crust is at its thickest, being about 90 kilometers (56 miles). Earth's crust has an average thickness of between 21 and 27 kilometers (13 to 17 miles). The smaller the planetary body, the thicker the crust on average, but Mars has a crust thicker than that of the Moon, which was determined by the Apollo mission seismometers to be between 34 and 43 kilometers (21 to 27 miles) thick.

"This means that the Martian crust is much thicker than that of the Earth or the Moon," Doyeon Kim, a geophysicist and senior research scientist at ETH Zurichs Institute of Geophysics, said in a statement. "We were fortunate to observe this quake. On Earth, we would have difficulty determining the thickness of the Earth's crust using the same magnitude of quake that occurred on Mars. While Mars is smaller than the Earth, it transports seismic energy more efficiently."

On the left is a topographic map of the Martian surface, and a representation of the crust thickness is shown on the right.

Image credit: MOLA Science Team / Doyeon Kim, ETH Zurich

The work also expands on the Martian dichotomy, the peculiar problem of the Martian surface that is roughly divided in two: flat volcanic lowlands in the northern hemisphere, and highland plateaus covered in meteorite craters in the south. One idea was that the density of the crust was different, which would produce the differences seen. But this and a previous study have shown that the density of the crust is roughly the same all across the planet. The crust in the southern hemisphere simply extends more deeply.

The work also reported on the radioactive material heating up the interior of Mars, such as thorium, uranium, and potassium. Between 50 and 70 percent of these heat-producing elements are found in the Martian crust. This could explain some of the Marsquake sources, if local melting events continue to take place today.

The study is due to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, and the preprint can be read here.

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Mars Has A Crust Thicker Than Earth's And A Radioactive Heat Source - IFLScience

At this very moment, eleven robotic missions are exploring Mars, a combination of orbiters, landers, rovers, and one aerial vehicle (the Ingenuity helicopter). Like their predecessors, these missions are studying Mars atmosphere, surface, and subsurface to learn more about its past and evolution, including how it went from a once warmer and wetter environment to the freezing, dusty, and extremely dry planet we see today. In addition, these missions are looking for evidence of past life on Mars and perhaps learning if and where it might still exist today.

One particularly interesting issue is how the atmosphere of Mars primarily composed of carbon dioxide (CO2) is relatively enriched with Carbon-13 (13C), aka. heavy carbon. For years, scientists have speculated that the ratio of this isotope to light carbon (12C) might be responsible for organics found on the surface (a sign of biological processes!). But after analyzing data from the ESAs ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission, an international team led by The Open University determined that these organics may be abiotic in origin (i.e., not biological).

The study was led by Juan Alday, a postdoctoral researcher with The Open University (OU), and members of its Atmospheric Research and Surface Exploration group. They were joined by the Space Research Institute (IKI), the Laboratoire Atmosphres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), and the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics (AOPP) group at the University of Oxford. Their findings were represented in a paper titled Photochemical depletion of heavy CO isotopes in the Martian atmosphere, which recently appeared in Nature Astronomy.

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 96% of the atmosphere on Mars, with trace amounts of carbon monoxide (0.0557%). The relative abundance of the heavy carbon isotope in these gases (which accounts for just 1.1% of carbon isotopes in Earths atmosphere) has been attributed to the preferential escape of light carbon (12C) to space over several billion years. This is based in part on recent measurements by NASAs Curiosity rover that revealed a depletion of 13C in surface organic material (methane gas).

By analyzing this enrichment, scientists hope to learn more about the atmospheric processes contributing to the evolution of isotopic ratios between the upper and lower atmosphere. Since atmospheric CO and organic molecules share the same 13C-depleted isotopic signature, scientists hope to find clues as to whether organic processes (a possible indication of life) may have played a role. For the sake of their study, the team led by Dr. Alday examined CO vertical profiles obtained by the TGO Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS).

This suite consists of three infrared Echelle-spectrometers that gather information in the near-, mid-, and far-infrared (NIR, MIR, TIRVIM) channels. Since 2016, these instruments have gathered spectra from Mars atmosphere, using absorption lines that indicate the presence of different chemical elements to determine its composition. The team then combined this data with a photochemical model that predicts the depletion of carbon and oxygen in CO molecules in the atmosphere due to interaction with solar radiation.

Their results indicate (contrary to what was previously thought) that carbon monoxide (CO) in the Martian atmosphere is depleted of heavy carbon instead of light carbon. As Dr. Alday explained in an OU News press release.

The key [to] understanding why there is less 13C in CO lies in the chemical relationship between CO2 and CO. When CO2 molecules are destroyed by sunlight to form CO, 12CO2 molecules are more efficiently destroyed than 13CO2, leading a depletion of 13C in CO over long periods of time.

These findings help address the long-standing debate about whether biological or non-biological processes led to the presence of organic material on the surface of Mars. Despite the trace amounts of CO in the atmosphere of Mars, they have important implications for our understanding of how the Martian atmosphere and climate have evolved with time. On the one hand, they could provide insight into past conditions that allowed for flowing and standing bodies of water on the surface.

On the other, it helps refine the search for past life on Mars, even if the findings could be seen as a letdown. The ultimate goal, said Dr. Alday, is to determine if the conditions for life ever existed and if they lasted long enough for life to emerge:

We do not know what the atmosphere of early Mars was like nor what conditions allowed liquid water to flow on the surface. The isotopes of carbon on Mars atmosphere can help us estimate how much CO2 there was in the past. The new measurements by the ExoMars TGO suggest that less CO2 has escaped the planet than previously thought and provide new constraints on the composition of this early atmosphere of Mars.

This research was made possible thanks to support from the UK Space Agency, which funded the development of the ACS spectrometers and the Atmospheric Research and Surface Exploration groups research. The TGO is part of the larger ExoMars program, a collaborative effort between the ESA and Roscosmos. This program will send the Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars in the coming years to further assist in the ongoing search for past (and maybe even present) life on Mars.

Further Reading: Open University News, Nature Astronomy

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Life Probably Didn't Have a Hand in Creating Organic Deposits on ... - Universe Today

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Ever wonder what it would be like to live on Mars? Soon, UC Davis Health Advanced Practice Nurse Alyssa Shannon will have a pretty good idea. She was selected to take part in a one-year analog mission to simulate living on Mars for NASA.

Shannon will join three other crew members for NASAs Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission, the first of three planned one-year Mars surface simulations. The crew will simulate the challenges of a human mission to Mars, including resource limitations, equipment failure, communication delays, and other environmental stressors.

Research gained during the CHAPEA mission will be used by NASA to inform risk and resource trades to best support crew health and performance while living on Mars, Shannon explained. This research will provide their experts with valuable information that will help future Mars missions succeed.

CHAPEA is a ground-based mission, set to begin in June at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. During the mission, crew members will live and work in a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat. It includes private crew quarters, a kitchen, living areas, work areas and two bathrooms. There's also a 1,200-square-foot external environment complete with Mars murals and red sand. There, the crew will conduct simulated spacewalks accompanied by virtual reality.

Shannon will serve as the crew science officer during the mission.

As science officer, I will be working in a small lab in a resource-restricted environment, Shannon said. I will have to navigate communication challenges, including time delay communication with NASA and equipment failures that astronauts might experience on Mars.

Shannon will rely on her experience as an advanced practice nurse with interventional cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery. In her role, she leads continuous quality improvement projects, provides data management and data analysis.

Alyssa Shannon will serve as the crew science officer during the mission.

Shannon first heard about the CHAPEA mission in August 2021 on a radio commercial. When she realized she fit all the criteria NASA was looking for, she decided to apply.

I was genuinely surprised to make it through the selection process, she said. When I was a child, I dreamed on being a colonist on Mars obviously this hasn't happened, but I am so excited to participate in this way.

Shannon leaves for Houston on May 24 to begin training for the CHAPEA mission and will not return home until July 2024.

While 12 months might seem like a long time to spend in a Mars habitat, astronauts who travel to Mars will likely have to endure being away from home for much longer. A round-trip journey from Earth to Mars will take an estimated 21 months, given the time it takes to travel between the two planets, plus waiting for their alignment to be just right for the return.

Crew members will live and work in a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat.

The time away will be hard, but the bigger mission is being able to help provide this invaluable research for space travel, added Shannon. In the future when humans actually land on Mars it will be so fulfilling to know that I played a small role in helping us get there.

Follow Shannon's experience during the CHAPEA mission on the Johnson Space Centers Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages.

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UC Davis Health nurse chosen for NASA's yearlong Mars analog ... - UC Davis Health

Itll take a lot of work in order to grow rice on Mars. First, and most importantly, we need a mission to successfully get to Mars and set up camp, something NASA is hoping to do in the late 2030s or early 2040s. The distance to Mars from Earth is about 300 million miles (or roughly 500 days aboard a shuttle), so once those astronauts land, theyll need to cultivate their own food. Theres no ordering a pizza for those guys.

Germinating seeds and growing food on the red planet is difficult, particularly when it comes to Martian soil. The soil on Mars contains a high level of perchlorate salts, which are toxic for plants.

To simulate Martian perchlorate levels, a team of researchers from the University of Arkansas gathered soil from the Mojave Desert, where the desert earth is similar to that on Mars. The area was developed by NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2007 as the Mojave Mars simulant (MMS). Researchers mainly use the area for soil sampling, but theyve also test-driven rovers and practiced using sampling equipment in icy conditions.

The research team grew three varieties of rice, including one strain of wild rice and two strains with gene-edited lines. The goal was to produce rice better suited to drought, salty conditions and a lack of natural sugars. All three rice strains were grown in three mediums: soil from the MMS, a regular potting soil mixture and a combination of the two. The plants were able to grow in the all-MMS soil, but they didnt thrive. Instead, the combined potting mixture provided the best results. Researchers found that a 75-percent MMS soil to 25-percent potting soil mixture created improved plants. They also discovered that plants could still take root with one gram of perchlorate per kilogram of soil, but three grams per kg was the upper limitpast that, nothing would grow.

The team presented its findings at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last month. Its next steps will be to experiment with other Martian soil simulants and other rice varieties that tolerate high salt concentrations. The team will also work to determine how much perchlorate can leach into the plant from the soil.

Its not just potential Martian settlers that could benefit from this experiment. There are several regions on this planet that are covered with high-salinity soil, such as parts of the Australian desert.

But perchlorate salts is just one issue facing would-be Martian farmers. Martian soil is lighter and looser than soils on Earth, meaning they would drain water faster than our soil. Its also missing many nutrients on which we rely to grow crops, such as nitrogen. Plus, Mars has about a third of Earths gravity, which could be disorienting for plants that rely on gravity to root into the ground.

However, we may be closer than we think to providing astronauts with a semi-varied diet. In recent studies, wheat, mustard and tomatoes have all performed well in simulated conditions. Those on the mission to Mars may not be able to order a pizza, but they might just be able to make one themselves.

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How to Grow Rice on Mars - Modern Farmer

Oxia Planum is the site on Mars where the ESAs Rosalind Franklin rover is slated to land and analyze samples. Photo: NASA / JPL-CALTECH / UARIZONA

March 17, 2022, was a rough day for Jorge Vago. A planetary physicist, Vago heads science for part of the European Space Agencys ExoMars programme. His team was mere months from launching Europes first Mars rover a goal they had been working toward for nearly two decades. But on that day, ESA suspended ties with Russias space agency over the invasion of Ukraine. The launch had been planned for Kazakhstans Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is leased to Russia.

They told us we had to call the whole thing off, Vago says. We were all grieving.

It was a painful setback for the beleaguered Rosalind Franklin rover, originally approved in 2005. Budget woes, partner switches, technical issues and the COVID-19 pandemic had all, in turn, caused previous delays. And now, a war. Ive spent most of my career trying to get this thing off the ground, Vago says. Complicating things further, the mission included a Russian-made lander and instruments, which the member states of ESA would need funding to replace. They considered many options, including simply putting the unused rover in a museum. But then, in November, came a lifeline, when European research ministers pledged 360 million euros to cover mission expenses, including replacing Russian components.

When the rover finally does, hopefully, blast off in 2028, it will carry a suite of advanced instruments but one in particular could make a huge scientific impact. Designed to analyse any carbon-containing material found underneath Marss surface, the rovers next-generation mass spectrometer is the linchpin of a strategy to finally answer the most burning question about the Red Planet: Is there evidence of past or present life?

There are a lot of different ways that you can search for life, says analytical chemist Marshall Seaton, a NASA postdoctoral program fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and coauthor of a paper on planetary analysis in the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry. Perhaps the most obvious and direct route is simply looking for fossilised microbes. But nonliving chemistry can create deceptively lifelike structures. Instead, the mass spectrometer will help scientists look for molecular patterns that are unlikely to be formed in the absence of living biology.

Hunting for the patterns of life, instead of structures or specific molecules, has an added benefit in an extraterrestrial environment, Seaton says. It allows us to not only look for life as we know it, but for life as we dont know it.

Packing for Mars

At NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, DC, planetary scientist William Brinckerhoff shows off a prototype of the rovers mass spectrometer, known as the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA. Roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase, the instrument is a labyrinth of wires and metal. Its really a workhorse, Brinkerhoff says as his colleague, planetary scientist Xiang Li, adjusts screws on the prototype before demonstrating a carousel that holds samples.

This working prototype is used to analyse organic molecules in Mars-like soils on Earth. And once the real MOMA gets to Mars, approximately in 2030, Brinckerhoff and his colleagues will use the prototype as well as a pristine copy kept in a Mars-like environment at NASA to test tweaks to experimental protocols, troubleshoot issues that come up during the mission and facilitate interpretation of Mars data.

This latest mass spectrometer can trace its roots back nearly 50 years, to the first mission that studied Martian soil. For the twin 1976 Viking landers, engineers miniaturised room-size mass spectrometers to roughly the footprint of todays desktop printers. The instruments were also on board the 2008 Phoenix lander, the 2012 Curiosity rover and later Mars orbiters from China, India and the US.

Anyone visiting Brinckerhoffs prototype must first pass a display case with a dismantled copy of the Viking instrument, on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. This is like a national treasure, Brinckerhoff says, enthusiastically pointing out components.

Mass spectrometers are indispensable tools that are used for analytical chemistry in laboratories and other facilities worldwide. TSA agents use them to test luggage for explosives at the airport. EPA scientists use them to test drinking water for contaminants. And drugmakers use them to determine chemical structures of potential new medications.

Many kinds of mass spectrometers exist, but each is a three-part instrument, explains Devin Swiner, an analytical chemist at the pharmaceutical company Merck. First, the instrument vaporizes molecules into the gas phase, and also gives them an electrical charge. These charged, or ionised, gas molecules can then be manipulated with electric or magnetic fields so theyll move through the instrument.

Second, the instrument sorts ions by a measurement that scientists can relate to molecular weight, so they can determine the number and type of atoms a molecule contains. Third, the instrument records all the weights in a sample along with their relative abundance.

With MOMA aboard, the Rosalind Franklin rover will land at a Martian site that roughly 4 billion years ago likely had water, a crucial ingredient for ancient life. The rovers cameras and other instruments will help to select samples and provide context about their environment. A drill will retrieve ancient samples from as deep as two meters. Scientists hypothesise thats far enough, Vago says, to be shielded from cosmic radiation on Mars that breaks up molecules like a million little knives.

Space-bound mass spectrometers must be rugged and lightweight. A mass spectrometer with MOMAs capabilities would normally occupy multiple workbenches, but its been shrunk substantially. To be able to take something that can be as big as a room to the size of like a toaster or a small suitcase and send it into space is a very huge deal, Swiner says.

The look of life

MOMA will help scientists look for telltale signs of life on Mars by sifting through molecules in search of patterns that are unlikely to be formed any other way. For instance, lipids compounds that include building blocks of cell membranes have a preponderance of even numbers of carbon atoms in nearly all living things, while nonliving chemistry produces a more equal mix of even and odd numbers of carbon atoms. Finding a set of lipids with carbon atoms that are multiples of a number rather than a random assortment is a potential signature of life.

Similarly, amino acids the building blocks of proteins can be created either by life or by non-biological chemistry. They come in two forms that are mirror images of each other but are otherwise identical, like left and right hands. On Earth, life overwhelmingly contains only left-handed amino acids. Nonliving chemistry makes both left- and right-handed varieties. In other words, a large excess of either left- or right-handed amino acids is more lifelike than a more even mixture.

More generally, scientists think that chemical distributions similar to these would be indicative of life even if the molecules exhibiting the patterns dont exist in Earth biochemistry.

Previous Mars missions that included mass spectrometers ran into problems that hampered their ability to identify signs of life. Scientists took those hard-earned lessons and designed MOMA to overcome those hurdles, including one of the most troubling ones: the notorious molecule destroyer, perchlorate. Perchlorate, which also turns up in extreme Earth environments like South Americas Atacama Desert, can degrade organic molecules at high temperatures, obscuring potential signs of life.

In 2008, the Mars Phoenix lander discovered perchlorate ions in Mars soil. Two other missions, the Viking lander and the Curiosity rover, detected chlorinated hydrocarbons possible byproducts of perchlorate reacting with Martian molecules in the high-temperature ovens of their mass spectrometers. This meant that perchlorate may have obscured any evidence of organic molecules that could indicate life.

MOMA cleverly circumvents the perchlorate problem with an ultraviolet laser. The laser vaporises and ionizes samples in one go, with pulses of light lasting under two nanoseconds too quick for perchlorate reactions to occur.

The laser has another benefit: It leaves molecules largely intact when giving them a charge to create ions. Viking and Curiosity generated ions by bombarding them with electrons. Those collisions didnt preserve weak chemical bonds that can be important for determining the structures of molecules in a sample, whereas the laser keeps molecule fragmentation to a minimum. MOMA can then sort those relatively intact ions and deliberately fragment a single ion of interest in isolation, something neither Viking nor Curiosity could do. By analysing the resulting puzzle pieces of that ion, its possible to determine the chemical structure of the original molecule from the Martian sample and thus identify what it is.

It will be the first time this laser technique goes to Mars, but tests on Earth suggest it will work. The prototype found traces of organic molecules even in the presence of more perchlorate than Phoenix detected in Martian soil, Brinckerhoff says. And in Mars-like samples collected in Yellowstone National Park, it detected lipids and other molecules that are more complex than ones picked up on previous Mars missions.

MOMA, like its predecessors, also has high-temperature ovens and scientists can still opt to use these instead of the laser to vaporize samples. If the laser turns up hints of amino acids, for instance, the oven option could provide information the laser cannot. When in oven mode, MOMA uses three chemical reagents that stabilize molecules to facilitate mass spectrometry. One of these, which has never before been used on Mars, is there to tell apart left- and right-handed amino acids, enabling it to make a case for living or nonliving origins in a way that prior missions could not.

MOMA wont be the last word on whether life ever existed on Mars. Even the most tantalizing results would have to be confirmed by repeated experiments and lines of evidence from the rovers other instruments, Vago says. Some confirmatory work also could take place through other missions or even someday from analysis of Mars samples brought back to Earth. We will need to build a case, because otherwise nobodys going to believe us, Vago says.

The international team of scientists that has been working on the mission knows what they need to build that case, but until the Rosalind Franklin Rover lands on the Red Planets surface, they cant get started. All of those scientists shared the disappointment in March 2022 of seeing the long-stalled mission delayed once again.

But for Brinckerhoff, that disappointment is tempered with excitement: After all, the mission is still alive. This thing is the best of all of us, he says, and just to see it operate on Mars is going to be career catharsis.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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The Long-Awaited Mission That Could Transform Our ... - The Wire Science

A recent study inNature Scientific Reports by Jonathan P. R. Scott and colleagues makes the case for sending exclusively all-female crews on long-duration missions. The reasoning here is simple: women have significant less body mass, with in the US the 50th percentile for women being 59.2 kg and 81.8 kg for men. This directly translates into a low total energy expenditure (TEE), along with a lower need for everything from food to water to oxygen. On a long-duration mission, this could conceivably save a lot of resources, thus increasing the likelihood of success.

With this in mind, it does raise the question of why female astronauts arent more commonly seen throughout Western space history, with Sally Ride being the first US astronaut to fly in 1983. This happened decades after the first female Soviet cosmonaut, when Valentina Tereshkova made history in 1963 on Vostok 6, followed by Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982 and again in 1984, when she became the first woman to perform a spacewalk.

With women becoming an increasingly more common sight in space, it does bear looking at what blocked Western women for so long, despite efforts to change this. It all starts with the unofficial parallel female astronaut selection program of the 1950s.

When the Space Age began in the 1950s, Western society was still struggling with emancipation, especially with the Cold War as a clash of cultures reinforcing many stereotypes regarding the role of the woman in society. Even as Soviet women were free to take up jobs even after getting married and manage their own affairs, the nuclear family, with the woman as the caretaker of the plentiful offspring was seen as the ultimate counterpoint to this, and a rejection of communist ideals.

One result of this was the corresponding drop in women following higher education, with the share of women college students falling from about 47% in 1920 to 38% by 1958 in the US. Although more financial aid was available via the government for education, societal pressures fed into most households being single-income, with the husband making money and the wife taking care of the family and household matters. This pattern didnt begin to change until the 1970s.

In light of all this, there wasnt so much a single reason why US women did not generally make it into high-up places including the skies and space but rather the fallout from a complex patchwork of societal expectations, poor scientific practices and an astounding amount of cognitive biases that led to this widespread discrimination. This was a practice that was reflected in the US military, with the Womens Army Corps (WAC, established as the WAAC in 1942) as well as the 1948 established Women in the Air Force (WAF) heavily limiting the duties that could be performed by the women in either.

Ultimately, when it came to selecting the first US astronauts, these would be selected from ideally the most fit candidates, preferably from the Air Force and similar extreme fitness backgrounds. That only male candidates were considered was in light of all this therefore both a logical result and par for the course. This did not mean that it was an absolute, however, with William Randolph Lovelace IIs efforts while working as head of NASAs Life Sciences being instrumental in unofficially qualifying female astronaut candidates alongside the male candidates for Project Mercury.

The name for the group of thirteen women who went through this selection process, the Mercury 13, was coined in 1995 by Hollywood producer James Cross as a comparison with the Mercury 7. Even so, it essentially captures the parallel nature of this program within Project Mercury. Even as the male astronaut candidates went through the rigorous testing program, so did the female candidates under guidance of Dr. Lovelace and his team, starting with Jerrie Cobb, a highly accomplished aviator.

Although Jerrie Cobb and twelve others with similar qualifications as her passed the tests with flying colors, NASAs requirement for the Project Mercury astronauts was that the candidates were all military test pilots, experienced with high-speed flight and with an engineering background. This precluded all of the potential female candidates and despite lobbying attempts by Lovelace, Cobb and others, ultimately only male astronauts would fly.

After Valentina Tereshkovas solo space flight in 1962, she would ridicule the US and its purported freedoms, where a woman was denied the opportunity to compete equally with men. It would still take twenty-one years after that comment before the first female US astronaut would make it to space. Ultimately none of the Mercury 13 would fly to space, although Wally Funk would fly on a suborbital flight with Blue Origins New Shepard vehicle at the age of 82, making her the only one of the thirteen women to make it nearly to space.

Although the logic of the modeling performed by Jonathan P. R. Scott and colleagues in their paper on the benefits of a female crew makes objectively sense, its important to consider the main concerns that were raised despite these female candidates passing the same tests as their male counterparts, as summarized in a 1964 paper by J. R. Betson & R. R. Secrest titled Prospective women astronauts selection program in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (doi:10.1016/0002-9378(64)90446-6).

Essentially the concern raised was about the suitability of a woman in the operating of complex machinery while she would be on her period, and the effect this might have on her mental faculties, as well as the complications of having to deal with the menstrual flow. Males would be more optimal in this regard, with a stable endocrine system and no complications to consider.

As we have found since the 1960s, women can most definitely function in space, and there are a number of ways to deal with a period while in space, including not having periods at all. The latter is accomplished with contraceptives that suppress ovulation, where instead of having an off week each month the contraceptive is constantly supplied, possibly as a subdermal system for flights to Mars. Although on the ISS dealing with waste and having sanitary products shuttled up from Earths surface is doable, for long-term missions its obvious that it is an aspect that has to be considered as well.

As for the emotional stability and similar aspects, none of these were found to be valid concerns over the decades that female astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts have spent time in space. There is after all no fundamental difference between men and women beyond their biological sex and the associated endocrine system. As demonstrated by e.g. Daphne Joel et al. in a 2015 study involving fMRI scans of male and female volunteers, despite the physical (size) differences between male and female brains, they are not sexually dimorphic. Rather than personality being determined by the biological sex, it is a purely unique, individualistic pattern.

What this means is that the typical selection procedures for astronauts involving not only physical challenges but also psychological tests apply equally, regardless of the candidates biological sex.

Considering the scientific evidence, it is in a sense rather tragic that a headline like all-female Mars mission crew should even make the headlines. Many decades after the Mercury 13 tried to make their case, and after a few decades now of both male and female astronauts working side by side, it should be clear that the goal for any mission is to pick the right crew for the job. If that means picking the astronauts who have the lowest body mass and resulting lowest energy, water and oxygen requirements, and they also happen to be overwhelmingly female, then that is good mission design.

Especially when it comes to a highly dangerous mission, such as a long-duration mission to Mars, the primary concern ought to be what would give the crew the highest chances of success. If hundreds of kilograms of supplies could be cut, or be kept back as emergency supplies because the crew is composed solely of individuals slim in stature, then that makes sense in any logical way. Even if the trauma of generations of anti-intellectual and pseudo-scientific nonsense regarding certain groups in society insist that we should discuss it in great length once again.

While it is great to see that things have definitely changed since the 1960s, the struggles of the Mercury 13 women and the countless others like them over the decades should not be forgotten.

(Heading image: Astronaut Tracy Caldwell in the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA) )

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Making The Case For All-Female Exploration Missions To Mars And ... - Hackaday