New Mars Probability for Habitable Niche
With a third harsh winter slowly approaching the planet Mars since the arrival of the twin rover Spirit and its companion Opportunity, NASA team leaders have been slowly driving the little robot Spirit to a safe spot for its ultimate survival. This safe spot is considered to be one that will offer the least winter damage to the rover, in order for it to celebrate its fourth Martian anniversary since its arrival on Mars in January 2004 with its twin rover, Opportunity. Slowly pulling itself backward over the Martian terrain since March of 2006, Spirit’s malfunctioning right front has forced it to drive on its remaining five wheels while dragging the lame one along like a bad habit.
But in December of 2007, Cornell’s Steven Squyres, principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission, has recently discovered that Spirit’s front right wheel had found “one of the most significant mission discoveries” to date. Uncovered in this lame front wheel are silica-rich deposits that are providing new evidence for a once-habitable environment in Gusev Crater. This recent find was reported by Squyres and his colleagues at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last December.
When the front wheel had quit turning on Spirit, the little rover had been exploring a plateau in the Gusev Crater–known to us all who have kept up with the rover as Home Plate. But what unexpectedly developed was when the upturned soil following the dragging wheel appeared to be unusually bright. The rover took measurements with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and mini-thermal emission spectrometer, with the results showing that the upturned soil as about 90% amorphous silica. On Earth, that type of soil would be associated with life-supporting environments.
“This is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence for formerly habitable conditions that we have found,” said Squyres, Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Professor of Planetary Science, in a Dec. 11 interview with the BBC.
Silica deposits on Earth are usually found at the location of hot springs where the hot water will dissolve silica in rock below the surface. This will then rise and cool, while causing the silica to precipitate out while near the hot spring’s surface, and also at fumaroles. The fumarole is where hot acidic water or vapors will eventually seep through rock, while in the meantime dissolving away other elements while leaving the silica behind in its wake. “Either place on Earth is teeming with microbial life,” said Squyres. “So this is, either way, a representation of what in the past was a local habitable environment — a little habitable niche on the surface of Mars.”
This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 12:11 am and is filed under Space Agency News, Technical Concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
