Curiosity finds conditions once suited to life on Mars
13 Mar 2013 by Evoluted New Media
An ancient network of rivers on Mars could once have supported life according to the latest findings from NASA’s Curiosity rover.
Scientists have identified clay materials in the powder the rover drilled out of sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on Mars last month. They say the clays could only have been formed if water was present. The researchers also found sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and carbon - some of the fundamental elements for life - in the sample.
Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program said: “A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment. From what we know now, the answer is yes.”
Data returned by Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments suggested that habitable conditions may have once been present on the planet. Results indicated the Yellowknife Bay area the rover was exploring could have provided chemical energy and other favourable conditions for microorganisms.
The rover drilled into a patch of bedrock that lies in an ancient network of stream channels descending from the rim of Gale Crater. Curiosity collected a sample from the bedrock at a site just a few hundred yards away from where the rover earlier found an ancient streambed in September 2012.
“Clay minerals make up at least 20 per cent of the composition of this sample,” said David Blake, principal investigator for the CheMin instrument at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California.
The clays can only have been formed in water, as a product of the reaction between H2O and igneous materials, such as olivine, which was also present in the sediment.
To confirm these results, an additional drilled sample will be analysed for several of the trace elements found by the SAM instrument.
John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at the CalTech said: “We have characterised a very ancient, but strangely new ‘gray Mars’ where conditions once were favourable for life. Curiosity is on a mission of discovery and exploration, and as a team we feel there are many more exciting discoveries ahead of us in the months and years to come.”
