Microbes Thwarted from Surviving on Mars
This view from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows bedrock within a stratigraphic layer informally named “Lyell,” which is the lowermost of three layers the rover has examined at a bright band around the inside of Victoria Crater. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University
“The engineering efforts that have enabled the rovers’ longevity have tremendously magnified the science return,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers’ science payload. “All of Spirit’s most important findings, such as evidence for hot springs or steam vents, came after the prime mission.”
NASA’s twin rover, Opportunity, has been discovering high concentrations of dissolved minerals in the Mars environment, which may be preventing any Martian microbes from developing or even surviving in the past. According to Andrew Knoll, a biologist at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., in addition to being a member of the rover science team, “Not all water is fit to drink.”
Opportunity has spent the past months closely examining a band of rocks around a crater’s inner wall, at the same time when both rovers celebrated their fifth year on Mars in January 2008. New observations by the both rovers are being discussed, in addition to a recent analysis of earlier discoveries, with perspectives on which of the successes will apply to any upcoming Martian missions. The discussion involved the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, as previously scientists had hypothesized that the ground material might preserve some type of record right before the impact had excavated the crater. Now that more data has been gathered, it is suggested that it was at the top of an underground water table.
As more experiments are processed and data is gathered in simulated Martian conditions along with computer modeling, researchers are refining earlier assessments. These are regarding the previous conditions in the Meridiani area that was considered to be “environmental friendly” to the microbes. Now this same environment is not considered so friendly, due to the high salinity of the water when it left behind minerals that Opportunity had found.
NASA’s Mars agencies have used the Mars exploration theme of “follow the water” for their all their current rovers and orbiter missions. The twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are said to have worked 16 times longer than NASA had originally sent them up for. Each rover drove 20 times further than they were supposed to, finding geological records that showed a wide diversity in water effects of the ancient Mars environments. The next mission, the Phoenix lander which will land on Mars May 25, will begin to look at the shallow subsurface environment of ice soil on northern Mars, using revived technology from the rover missions.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 2:31 am and is filed under Mission History, Mission Objectives. 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.
