Mars rover could answer questions here on Earth – The Union Leader

Did life ever exist on Mars? Are we alone? Are we special?

Those are the questions a Dartmouth College researcher has been thinking about as she eagerly awaits new data and images from NASAs Perseverance rover, which landed on the red planet last Thursday.

Marisa Palucis, an assistant professor in the department of earth sciences, is a geomorphologist. I look at landscapes and think about how they evolved over time as a function of climate or tectonics, she explained.

For her, what makes Mars fascinating is its similarity to early Earth. Before Earth was teeming with life, before Earth had trees and dinosaurs were roaming around, it would have looked a lot like Mars, she said.

Mars today is very cold and dry, she said, but scientists believe that billions of years ago, the planet had rivers, lakes, volcanoes, perhaps even an ocean. But whereas Earth developed life and is what we know it as today, Mars didnt go that route, she said. So I think thats really fun to study the planet that was potentially very much like our own, at least early on.

In 2012, when she was a graduate student, Palucis was among the scientists gathered at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to watch the Curiosity rover land safely on Mars. I just remember watching grown men around me crying, she said.

Last Thursday, Palucis felt a similar rush of pride and excitement watching alone in her Dartmouth office as Perseverance stuck the landing on Mars.

She was part of a worldwide scientific community that weighed in on 60 potential locations for the rover to land. NASA selected the Jezero Crater, which scientists believe was once home to an ancient river delta.

That was Palucis first choice for Perseverance to explore.

Crater lakes are her specialty. Thats why Im so excited about this particular landing site, she said. It was clearly an ancient lake.

Her field research has taken her to such extreme environments as the Arctic and Death Valley. We go to really cold places or really dry places, basically places that have some aspects of Mars associated with them, she said.

Palucis investigates features such as water flow and sedimentary deposits. By studying them in the field, I use that to try to understand how they evolve over time, and that understanding helps me understand how they would have worked on Mars.

Until now, Mars rover missions have focused on the presence of water. We know that water is so important to life on Earth so we wanted to see: was there liquid water on the surface of Mars, she said.

The Curiosity rover, which continues to explore Mars, proved there were indeed large lakes that lasted for potentially millions of years, she said. Now Perseverance will be looking for evidence of life.

The Jezero crater that Perseverance will explore is an ancient lake with preserved deposits similar to the Mississippi Delta, she said. If youre looking for evidence of life, Palucis said, A great place to look would be a delta, where you have basically water meeting land, so you have the fresh inputs of nutrients.

Scientists hope to find evidence of fossilized microbes. But even if life didnt evolve on Mars, scientists want to learn whether there were precursors to life, Palucis said.

These are not just theoretical questions for scientists such as Palucis. Understanding the past is the key to the future, she said. Being able to really understand what it takes for life to emerge, or how does a planet deal with climate as its changing?

Mars is a whole other laboratory, a whole other set of parameters we have at our disposal, she said. The more we understand about that, the more we understand about our planet and how it works.

The Perseverance mission has four objectives: identifying past environments that would have been capable of supporting microbial life; seeking signs of that life; collecting core rock and soil samples that will eventually be returned to Earth; and testing oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere.

Perseverance carries an instrument called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), which is tasked with producing oxygen from the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere. According to NASA.gov, MOXIE makes oxygen like a tree does. It inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen.

If liquid oxygen propellant could be manufactured on Mars, that fuel could be used to return Martian samples to Earth, and even to generate fuel to maintain a colony there someday.

Palucis doesnt have to wait for the samples to be returned to Earth. For her, the images that Perseverance is already sending home reveal important data about sediments and water transport on the planet that will advance her research.

But those Martian rock cores will help other scientists understand how long the planet remained wet and why it dried up, she said. We care about climate change on Earth, and Mars had this epic climate change, she said.

I do think its a worthwhile thing to study so we can make hard decisions about our own planet and how we treat it.

Its easy for a lay person to anthropomorphize these rovers that have been exploring Mars on their own for decades now. Palucis admits she does the same.

I definitely think of them as little robotic geologists, she said.

So when two previous Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, stopped transmitting, Palucis felt the sadness of loss. They died on Mars, she said. It does feel like they went there to learn and do all of these things for us. And I know theyre just robots but at the same time, its hard not to think of them as more.

After the past year of pandemic and economic hardship, Perseverances successful landing on Mars is something to celebrate, Palucis said. It gives us something as a society and as Americans to be really proud of, she said. And to remind ourselves that were explorers, and were curious.

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Mars rover could answer questions here on Earth - The Union Leader