Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Gets a Sister – What Should She Do ? Scientists Speak

Mars Curiosity Sisters a1_Ken Kremer

Image caption: Seeing Double – Future Martian Sisters. NASA just announced plans to build and launch a new Mars science robotic rover in 2020 based on the design of the tremendously successful Curiosity rover which touched down safely inside Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012. This mosaic illustrates an imaginary Red Planet get-together of Curiosity and her yet to be constructed Martian sister. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer

Curiosity will apparently get a sister after all and she’ll be born in 2020 – rising from the ashes of a near death experience.

The good news concerning approval of a future NASA Mars rover was announced this week by John Grunsfeld, NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ, at the 2012 annual meeting of the AGU (American Geophysical Union) held in San Francisco.

What should Curiosity’s younger sister do? There are a multitude of great ideas, but a paucity of money in these very tough budget times – foremost among them is to gather and return the first ever Martian soil samples to Earth. What should the science goals be especially with regards to sample cache/return?

So, I asked these questions to Grunsfeld and leading Mars scientists, including Steve Squyres, Ray Arvidson and Jim Bell, the science team and camera leaders of NASA’s wildly successful Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Opportunity is nearing the 9th anniversary of her Red Planet touchdown – and is exploring the most scientifically bountiful terrain yet of her entire mission at this very moment.

The design for the new Mars rover, let’s call it MSL 2, will be largely based on NASA’s hugely successful Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover and the breathtaking rocket powered ‘Sky Crane’ landing architecture she so elegantly employed for touchdown barely 4 months ago on Aug. 6, 2012.

Grunsfeld and the researchers weighed in to Universe Today with their thoughts on this – “Will the 2020 Mars rover be focused on astrobiology and the search for life? Or, other goals like sample return or future human visits?”

“That question will ultimately be determined by the Science Definition Team,” Grunsfeld told me. “Historically the driving question behind our Mars exploration has been ‘are we alone in the universe?’ that includes searching for signs of conditions supportive of past and/or present life on Mars.”

Steve Squyres, of Cornell University in New York, says that “sample return is the next logical step” in Mars exploration.

“Simple… it should collect and cache a well-chosen set of samples for eventual return to Earth,” Squyres told me. “Doing so was the clear top priority of the recent planetary decadal survey.”

Squyres led the planetary decadel survey for the National Research Council (NRC) and is the scientific Principal Investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity MER rovers.

Image caption: Artists Concept for Mars Sample Return mission. Credit: NASA

“The recently announced 2020 rover has the potential to be directly responsive to the recommendations of the recent planetary decadal survey. The highest priority large mission identified by the Mars community, and indeed by the broader planetary community, in the decadal was a rover that would collect and cache a suite of samples for eventual return to Earth. The 2020 rover, which will be based on the highly capable MSL design, clearly can have that capability if it is appropriately equipped,” Squyres elaborated.

“The National Research Council planetary decadal survey documented the US planetary science community’s consensus views on future priorities for planetary exploration. The 2020 rover mission will be consistent with those priorities only if it collects and caches a suite of samples for eventual return to Earth,” Squyres told Universe Today.

Although retrieving and returning pristine samples from the Red Planet’s surface has long been the top priority for many researchers like Squyres, that ambitious goal would also be expensive and likely require a sequential series of flights to accomplish. But it is doable and would enable scientists on Earth to utilize every one of the most powerful science instruments at their disposal to help solve the most fundamental mysteries of all, like; ‘How did the Solar System form’, ’Did life ever exist on Mars’ and “Are We Alone?’

Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis and deputy Principal Investigator for the MER rover, said this to Universe Today:

“For the 2020 rover I would frame the rationale and purpose as:

“*The surface area of Mars is equivalent to the surface area of Earth’s continents. The more we look the richer the geologic record relevant to ancient climatic conditions (e.g., the rover bed gravels found by MSL and the new clay hunting grounds Opportunity is exploring). Thus another MSL class rover and payload to a new site of paleo-environmental interest would be wonderful. Imagine trying to unravel Earth’s history by exploring three locations (MER+MSL) on the continents,” Arvidson informed me.

“*Given the rich, complex nature of the geologic record another MSL class rover exploring a new location will definitely help us narrow down the best place to go for sample return.”

“*For the 2020 rover include some engineering tests that will lead to a lower risk sample return mission. This could be what measurements to do to decide on which samples to acquire and keep, could be how to drill, handle, and cache, etc.”

Jim Bell, of Arizona State University and team leader for the MER Pancam cameras also feels that sample return is the top priority.

“I think it’s important that the 2020 rover adhere to the planetary science community’s stated goals for the next flagship-class mission to Mars–that it make significant progress towards a robotic Mars sample return’” Bell told me. “This was the judgment of the recent National Academy of Science’s Planetary Decadal Survey–representing the consensus of more than 1600 professional planetary scientists worldwide. The simplest way to implement that would be to make the 2020 rover a caching rover–able to store well-selected samples for potential later return to Earth by another mission.”

“I’m really excited about the opportunity to send a new MSL-class rover to Mars, and speaking with my Planetary Society President hat on, I think the public will be really excited to follow another mission as well.”

“Mars exploration is incredibly popular, and represents the best aspects of American engineering, innovation, and scientific exploration. That mission, and the continuing discoveries from Curiosity, Opportunity, and other missions, will help get us closer to answering age-old questions like, “are we alone?” Exciting!” Bell said.

By reutilizing the now proven MSL designs, NASA should be able to restrain and accurately estimate the development costs while simultaneously retiring a lot of the unknown risks associated with the construction and testing of MSL 1.

At the AGU briefing, Grunsfeld said that the 2020 rover will cost about $1.5 Billion, plus or minus $200 million, and fits within the president’s NASA budget request for 2013 and going forward. Curiosity cost about $2.5 Billion over the course of a 10 year development span.

“This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity,” says Grunsfeld.

The exact nature and actual mass of the 2020 rover’s science instruments will be decided by the Science Definition Team and also depends on the actual budget allocation received by NASA.

The surprising decision to fund MSL 2 comes despite the Obama Administrations cancellation earlier this year of NASA’s participation in a pair of missions to Mars, jointly proposed with the European Space Agency (ESA) – the 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter and the 2018 ExoMars rover. ESA has now forged a new alliance with Russia to carry out Mars exploration. NASA will fund instruments on both spacecraft.

In February 2012, the Obama Administration cut the planetary science budget by 20% and NASA was forced to withdrawn from the two joint Mars missions with ESA – as outlined earlier here and here.

So, I asked Grunsfeld, “Will the 2020 mission be international with participation by ESA or Roscosmos?”

“Yes, it will be international. Details will be worked out in the planning phase,” Grunsfeld replied.

Image caption: Artist concept shows Earth return capsule with Red planet samples during rendezvous in Mars orbit. Credit: NASA

The 2020 launch window is next most favorable window after 2018 and would permit a higher weight of landed science instruments compared to Curiosity.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who represents the area that is home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has worked to reverse the budget cuts, applauded the announcement of “the new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020.”

Schiff issued a statement that said, “While a 2020 launch would be favorable due to the alignment of Earth and Mars, a launch in 2018 would be even more advantageous as it would allow for an even greater payload to be launched to Mars. I will be working with NASA, the White House and my colleagues in Congress to see whether advancing the launch date is possible and what it would entail.”

Now it’s up to NASA to formulate a well defined and realistic plan that the politicians will support. The specific payload and science instruments for the 2020 mission will be openly competed following established processes for instrument selection. A science definition team will be appointed to outline the scientific objectives for the mission.

Stay tuned here for continuing updates on Curiosity and the future of Mars exploration and more.

** Here is your chance to do something positive & simple – and ‘Save Our Science’!

Cast your vote for Curiosity as TIME magazine Person of the Year. Vote now and avoid the long lines at the polling booth – before it’s too late. You only have until 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 12 to cast your vote online.

Ken Kremer

…..
Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries and NASA missions at my upcoming free presentation for the general public at Princeton University.

Dec 11: Free Public lecture titled “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars (in 3 D)” and more including the Space Shuttle, Orion and SpaceX by Ken Kremer at Princeton University and the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) in Princeton, NJ at 8 PM – Princeton U campus at Peyton Hall, Astrophysics Dept. Students welcome.

Image Caption: Panoramic mosaic shows gorgeous Glenelg terrain where Curiosity is now touring in search of first rocks to drill into and sample. The eroded rim of Gale crater and base of Mount Sharp seen in the distance. This is a cropped version of the wider mosaic as assembled from 75 images acquired by the Mastcam 100 camera on Sol 64 in October 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity Update: Wrapping Up Rocknest

Here’s the latest video update from the MSL science team on Curiosity’s activities. It really just wraps up and recaps our article from earlier this week — that all of Curiosity’s science instruments are now fully up and running, that they found materials on Mars that have been seen by other missions, and they are still looking at some interesting carbon compounds. Also, Ashwin Vasavada reiterates what the science team said on Monday at the press conference: They’re doing science at the speed of science, and no one image or data point will cause us to re-write our science books.

Overhead map of Curiosity’s traverses. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

As for what the rover will do next, a couple team members Tweeted today that the rover’s wake up song today was “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” Curiosity is now finishing up at observations at an area called Point Lake; they’ll do some surveys of they another area called Yellowknife Bay, and in the next couple of weeks, do some drive-by imaging, perhaps use ChemCam, and the team said they would really like to find a target for the first use of Curiosity’s drill before the holidays start here on Earth.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity Update: No Definitive Discovery of Organics…Yet

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover documented itself in the context of its work site, an area called “Rocknest Wind Drift,” on the 84th Martian day, or sol, of its mission (Oct. 31, 2012). The rover worked at this location from Sol 56 (Oct. 2, 2012) to Sol 100 (Nov. 16, 2012). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The scientists from the Mars Science Laboratory mission had some good news and bad news at the much-anticipated briefing from the American Geophysical Union conference today. The good news is that all instruments are working well on the Curiosity rover, and they have found some potentially interesting compounds … organic compounds. The bad news is they are not sure if the organics are from Mars or not.

“SAM has no definitive detection to report of organic compounds,” said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on the Curiosity rover.

This graph compares the elemental composition of typical soils at three landing regions on Mars: Gusev Crater, where NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit traveled; Meridiani Planum, where Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity still roams, and now Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover is currently investigating. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Guelph

Interestingly – but not surprisingly – much of the data from the Curiosity rover is similar to previous Mars landers/rovers, such as Viking, the MER rovers and Phoenix. Curiosity’s instruments found chlorine, sulfur and water in Mars soil. Plus, remember the perchlorates that the Phoenix lander found on Mars four years ago? The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on Curiosity has “tentatively” identified perchlorate, which is an oxygen and chlorine compound, which is highly reactive. Reactions with other chemicals heated in SAM formed chlorinated methane compounds, which are one-carbon organics. The MSL scientists said that the chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the carbon may be of Earth origin, carried along from Earth by Curiosity.

Something like this happened previously, where a detection of methane by the SAM suite of instruments turned out to be air that was brought along from Florida, as air leaked into the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) while the spacecraft was awaiting launch. The initial readings from the TLS, full of methane, were very exciting to the Curiosity scientists until they realized it was from Earth.

And so, with these latest data, the science team wants to make sure these organic compounds truly come from Mars, or if it is from contamination brought along to Mars onboard Curiosity. And one other fly in the ointment is that the organics could also be primordial material from the cosmos delivered to Mars from meteorites, and not be of Martian origin.

But the good news here is that MSL’s suite of instruments should be able to determine the origin of the organics, no matter when they come from.

“This is the first fully integrated measurement on the mission in which every instrument participated in analysis,” said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger. “And all the instruments working together can tell us if it isn’t originally from Mars… but there’s a complicated decision pathway, and we have to explore each one systematically.”

Grotzinger said they would have to decide whether or not those formation pathways are abiotic or biologic. But that will take a while, as this missions is “moving at the speed of science.”

“This mission is about integrated science,” he said. “No single measurement will produce a hallelujah moment… We are going to pull it all together and take our time and after that if we’ve found something significant we’ll be happy to report that.”

Grotzinger was asked about how his comments a few weeks ago to an NPR reporter were construed as suggesting that an “earth-shaking” discovery had been made by the team, setting off wild speculation of what the rover found.

“What I’ve learned from this is that you have to be careful about what you say,” he said during the briefing, “and even more careful about how you say it. We’re doing science at the speed of science. But we live in a world that’s sort of at the pace of Instagrams. The enthusiasm that we had, that I had, that our whole team has about what’s going on here, I think it was just misunderstood.”
“The great thing about this was, as the days went by, I thought it was terrific this mission has such wide appeal and public interest,” Grotzinger said.

The exciting part, Grotzinger said, is when you have multiple measurements by the instruments that provide similar results. “When we saw SAM replicating results, we knew team would have stuff to chew on for years to come. That’s why we were excited,” he said.

Mahaffy said before the mission, they knew terrestrial contamination could be an issue.

“We’ve gone to great care to address potential confusion that could be caused by terrestrial contamination,” he said. “We have an organic check material along, a silica glass. In the end, we will drill into organic check material that we brought along. If we see same stuff, then it may be terrestrial.”

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired close-up views of sands in the “Rocknest” wind drift. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

The Curiosity team purposely looked for an area to study that they thought would be rather benign. Curiosity took five scoops of soil from the Rock Nest site, basically a small sand dune. They found sand grains of various sizes, which Ken Edgett from the Hand Lens Imager team described as thick grains “like the salt grains on those big hot pretzels you can get” to much finer material with “grain sizes kind of like artificial sweeteners.”

This plot of data from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the variety of gases that were released from sand grains upon heating in the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM. The gases detected were released from fine-grain material, and include water vapor, carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur dioxide. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC

As we reported earlier, the first scoops were used to clean out the chemistry system. The real analysis of a sample came when it was heated to about 500°C and the gases that were released were studied. The most abundant gas was water from water, but the amount of water wouldn’t be enough to support any sort of life, the team said, even though it was higher than expected. And interestingly, the deuterium to hydrogen ratio on the surface of Mars is five times heavier than that in Earth’s oceans.

The scientists said this could be a result of Mars’ gradual loss of atmospheric material, in which lighter isotopes were preferentially lost.

The CheMin instrument found the Rock Nest samples were about half and half common volcanic minerals and non-crystalline minerals such as glass.

This map shows where the Curiosity has driven since landing at a site subsequently named “Bradbury Landing,” and traveling to an overlook position near beside “Point Lake,” in drives totaling 1,703 feet (519 meters). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Beyond that, the team focused on saying this is just the beginning of the mission with lots of time and potential science ahead.

“We’re working on a mission where it’s always going to be difficult to describe in a general way what we’re discovering,” said Grotzinger. “We do want to be very careful about each step along the way. MSL is a mission that is looking for habitable environments. And for that, we would need a source of water, a source of energy and a source of carbon, an essential building block for biological structures.”

Grotzinger said that what tends to happen is that a lot of attention is paid to the third component, and added that the news last week that organics were found on Mercury shows that organics are common in the solar system. And even though the Curiosity rover has already found a water source – the streambed in Gale Crater, along with the water in the soil — the issue is the relative non-abundance of the organics on Mars, so far.

“If we would have found something that was so abundant, that would have been a surprise for us,” he said.

See the JPL press release.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Vote ‘Curiosity’ as TIME Person of the Year

I Need You ! Vote for ‘Curiosity’ as TIME magazine Person Of The Year. NASA’s new Curiosity Mars rover snapped this Head and Shoulders Self-Portrait on Sol 85 (Nov. 1 , 2012) as Humanity’s emissary to the Red Planet in Search of Signs of Life. Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Caption – I Need You ! Vote for ‘Curiosity’ as TIME magazine Person Of The Year.
NASA’s new Curiosity Mars rover snapped this Self-Portrait on Sol 85 (Nov. 1 , 2012) as Humanity’s emissary to the Red Planet in Search of Signs of Life. Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

You can make it happen. Vote Now ! Vote Curiosity !

Vote for ‘Curiosity’ as the Time magazine Person of the Year

Make your voice heard – Help send a message to the Feds to “Save Our Science” as the Fiscal Cliff nears and threatens our Science.

Perhaps you are a doubter. Well think again. Because at this moment NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has thrust forward into 5th Place, inching ahead of – comedian Stephen Colbert, according to the running tally at TIME’s Person of the Year website.

NASA’s SUV-sized Curiosity Mars rover is the most powerful science robot ever dispatched as Humanity’s emissary to the surface of the Red Planet. She is searching for Signs of Life and may shed light on the ultimate questions – “Are We Alone?” – “Where do We fit In?

Curiosity is NASA’s first Astrobiology mission to Mars since the twin Viking landers of the 1970’s.

TIME’s editors are soliciting your input on worthy candidates for Person of the Year, although they will choose the ultimate winner.

You have until 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 12 to cast your vote. The winner of the people’s choice will be announced on Dec. 14. The magazine itself with the ultimate winner appears on newsstands on Dec. 21

Image caption: Curiosity trundling across Mars surface inside Gale Crater on Sol 24 (Aug. 30, 2012). Colorized mosaic stitched together from Navcam images. This panorama is featured on PBS NOVA ‘Ultimate Mars Challenge’ documentary which premiered on PBS TV on Nov. 14. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

Read TIME’s statement about voting for Curiosity:

You may own a cool car — you may even own a truly great car — but it’s a cinch that no matter how fantastic it is, it can never be anything more than the second best car in the solar system. The greatest of all is the Mars Curiosity rover, one ton of SUV-size machine now 160 million miles from Earth and trundling across the Martian surface. It was the rover’s landing on Mars last August that first caught people’s eyes: an improbable operation that required a hovering mother ship to lower the rover to the surface on cables like a $2.5 billion marionette. But it’s the two years of exploration Curiosity has ahead of it — with a suite of instruments 10 times as large as any ever carried to Mars before — that will make real news. NASA built the country one sweet ride, and yes, alas, it’s sweeter than yours.

Cast your vote for Curiosity now, and avoid the long lines – before it’s too late

Ken Kremer

…..

Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries and NASA missions at my upcoming pair of free presentations for the general public at two colleges in New Jersey:

Dec 6: Free Public lecture titled “Atlantis, The Premature End of America’s Shuttle Program and What’s Beyond for NASA” including Curiosity, Orion, SpaceX and more by Ken Kremer at Brookdale Community College/Monmouth Museum and STAR Astronomy club in Lincroft, NJ at 8 PM

Dec 11: Free Public lecture titled “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars (in 3 D)” and more by Ken Kremer at Princeton University and the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) in Princeton, NJ at 8 PM – Princeton U Campus at Peyton Hall, Astrophysics Dept.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Everybody Chill, NASA Says: No Martian Organics Found

Curiosity maneuvering her robotic arm and conducting a close-up examination of windblown ‘Rocknest’ sand dune. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Relax everyone. There are no little green men or even a hint of organics on Mars… not yet, anyway.

“Everybody, chill,” Tweeted the Curiosity rover today. “After careful analysis, there are no Martian organics in recent samples.”

Update: And also, the Curiosity rover did not find plastic Mardi Gras beads on Mars either. More about that below.

Rumor and speculation abounded (and yes, we admit being part of that) after an interview with Mars Science Laboratory scientist John Grotzinger indicated something “earth-shaking” could be announced soon. “This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger was quoted by NPR.

Over a week later, NASA finally issued a statement that “speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect,” and said that a news conference from the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) on Monday, December 3 will be an update about first use of the rover’s full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil.

“One class of substances Curiosity is checking for is organic compounds — carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life. At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics,” the press release said.

The discussion on Twitter is that NASA perhaps didn’t do enough last week to quell the onslaught of conjecture and speculation. But most people in the US were scurrying off for the Thanksgiving holiday and perhaps didn’t notice a Tweet from the Curiosity Rover:

“What did I discover on Mars? That rumors spread fast online. My team considers this whole mission ‘one for the history books’.”

JPL’s press spokesperson Guy Webster told Universe Today’s Ken Kremer as much last week, saying “As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books. John was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John’s office last week. He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far.”

So, while it won’t be “big” news, you may want to tune into the press conference anyway at 9 a.m. PST Monday, Dec. 3. Audio and visuals from the briefing also will be streamed online at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .

Bummed? NASA stressed today that Curiosity is less than four months into a two-year prime mission to investigate whether conditions in Mars’ Gale Crater may have been favorable for microbial life. While Curiosity is exceeding all expectations, and has already has found an ancient riverbed, there’s no earth-shaking news to report at this time.

But don’t be surprised if there are some remarkable discoveries still to come.

And about those plastic beads…

As a prank, someone put up a very convincing-looking JPL knock-off webpage saying the rover had found plastic beads on Mars, and a la The Onion, supposedly quoted real scientists. One look at the picture, however and it becomes obvious this is a fake, plus the writer puts Curiosity at Endeavour Crater, where the Opportunity rover is located. Phil Plait does his normal great job of explaining it all, so check out his post at his new home at Slate.

Fake beads on Mars. Image credit: Xevier Jenks

In the meantime, the Curiosity rover shared this cute video that also speculates a bit about what could be found on Mars:

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Mars Dust Storm Likely Not Going Global

A regional dust storm visible in the southern hemisphere of Mars in this nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 25, 2012, has contracted from its size a week earlier. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Good news for the spacecraft sitting on or orbiting Mars: a dust storm on the Red Planet that looked as though it could spread around the entire planet now appears to be abating rather than going global, NASA says.

“During the past week, the regional storm weakened and contracted significantly,” said Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. Cantor uses the Mars Color Imager camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to monitor storms on the Red Planet.

Recent images and data from the Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on the Curiosity rover have also shown a hazy atmosphere and air pressure changes in the vicinity of Gale Crater.

Part of gigantic panorama from Curiosity, showing an increasingly hazy view off in the distance, likely because of a dust storm. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSS, with image editing by Stuart Atkinson. See the full panorama here.

“We are getting lots of good data about this storm,” said Mark Richardson of Ashima Research, Pasadena, California, a co-investigator both on REMS and on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Mars Climate Sounder instrument, which has been detecting widespread effects of the current storm on atmospheric temperatures.

Here’s a look at the growing dust storm from the Mars Color Imager on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 18, 2012 to compare with the lead image:

Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Researchers anticipate that the unprecedented combination of a near-equatorial weather station at ground level, and daily orbital observations during Mars’ dust-storm season, may provide information about why some dust storms grow larger than others.

This is good information to have for any potential future human visitors to Mars.

Source: JPL

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Ramps Up Complexity of Surface Ops with 1st ‘Touch and Go’ Maneuver – Cool Animation

Image Caption: Thanksgiving Greetings from Mars ! Curiosity snaps Head and Shoulders Self-Portrait on Sol 85 while posing at windblown ‘Rocknest’ ripple with eroded rim of Gale Crater in the background. This color mosaic was assembled from Mastcam 34 raw images snapped on Sol 85 (Nov. 1, 2012). See below the utterly cool animation of Curioity’s 1st ever ‘Touch and Go’ maneuver. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, NASA’s Curiosity mega Mars rover completed her first so-called “touch and go” maneuver – whereby she drives to and inspects an interesting rock and then moves on the same day to the next target of interest.

Check out the totally cool action animation below depicting Curiosity’s first ever “touch and go” movement and a subsequent martian drive of 83 feet (25.3 meters) conducted on Nov. 18.

“The ‘touch and go’ on Sol 102 went well, the data arriving in time for planning Sol 104”, says rover team member Ken Herkenhoff, of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The science and engineering team guiding Curiosity is commanding her to accomplish ever more sophisticated and bold forays across the floor of Gale crater after finishing more than a month of investigations at the windblown ripple named “Rocknest.

On Nov 16, Curiosity drove 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) to get within arm’s reach of a rock called “Rocknest 3”. She deployed the arm and placed the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument onto the rock, and then took two 10-minute APXS readings of data to ascertain the chemical elements in the rock.

Thereafter Curiosity stowed her 7 foot (2.1 m) long arm and drove eastward toward the next target called “Point Lake”.

Curiosity is now inside the ‘Glenelg’ geologic formation which the science team selected as the first major science destination because it lies at the intersection of three diverse types of geology areas that will help unlock the secrets of Mars’ ancient watery history and evolution to modern times.

Image Caption: Panoramic mosaic shows gorgeous Glenelg snapped by Curiosity on Sol 64 (Oct. 10) with eroded crater rim and base of Mount Sharp in the distance. Curiosity is now touring inside Glenelg. This is a cropped version of the full mosaic as assembled from 75 images acquired by the Mastcam 100 camera. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

“We have done touches before, and we’ve done goes before, but this is our first ‘touch-and-go’ on the same day,” said Curiosity Mission Manager Michael Watkins of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “It is a good sign that the rover team is getting comfortable with more complex operational planning, which will serve us well in the weeks ahead.”

During the holiday period, Curiosity is taking high resolution imagery, conducting atmospheric observations and making measurements with the DAN neutron spectrometer and her other state-of-the-art science instruments.

Meanwhile, the Curiosity science team is still ‘chewing over’ the meaning of the results from the first ever scoopful of soil spooned up at ‘Rocknest’ and ingested by the SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) chemistry instrument on the rover deck that is designed to detect organic molecules – the building blocks of life.

“We’ve got a briefing on Monday [Dec 3] where we’ll discuss our results,” Curiosity project manager John Grotzinger, of Caltech, told me. Those SAM results will be announced to a flurry of interest during the annual meeting of the AGU (American Geophysical Union) being held from Dec 3-7 in San Francisco.

Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries, SAM and NASA missions at my upcoming pair of free presentations for the general public at two colleges in New Jersey:

Ken Kremer

…..

Dec 6: Free Public lecture titled “Atlantis, The Premature End of America’s Shuttle Program and What’s Beyond for NASA” including Curiosity, Orion, SpaceX and more by Ken Kremer at Brookdale Community College/Monmouth Museum and STAR Astronomy club in Lincroft, NJ at 8 PM

Dec 11: Free Public lecture titled “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars (in 3 D)” and more by Ken Kremer at Princeton University and the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) in Princeton, NJ at 8 PM – Princeton U Campus at Peyton Hall, Astrophysics Dept.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Is Historic Discovery imminent concerning Martian Organic Chemistry ?

Image caption: Curiosity scoops repeatedly into this Martian soil at windblown ripple dubbed ‘Rocknest’, shown in this mosaic, and delivered samples to the SAM chemistry instrument, on the robots deck, to search for any signatures of organic molecules – the building blocks of life. This color mosaic was stitched together from hi-res color images taken by the robots 34 mm Mastcam camera on Sols 93 and 74. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS/Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

Has Curiosity made a ‘Historic’ science discovery with the SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) chemistry instrument that analyzes Martian soil (see mosaic above) and is designed to detect organic molecules – the building blocks of life? Has Curiosity unambiguously and directly detected the first signatures of organics on Mars ? Is an announcement imminent?

Speculation is rampant that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has made an earth-shaking discovery ‘for the history books’ , following a radio interview by NPR’s Joe Palca with the mission’s Principal Investigator, John Grotzinger, while sitting in his office at Caltech last week. NPR reported the story on Tuesday, Nov. 20.

“We’ve got a briefing on Monday [Dec 3] where we’ll discuss our results,” John Grotzinger told me.

Grotzinger will describe the SAM data and their potentially pivotal implications at the annual meeting of the AGU (American Geophysical Union) being held from Dec 3-7 in San Francisco. Many papers and results from the first three months of the Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) mission will be presented at the AGU meeting.

“The science team is analyzing data from SAM’s soil inspection, but not ready to discuss yet,” JPL Press spokesman Guy Webster informed me today.

It’s the Thanksgiving holiday period here in the US so the answers will wait a tad longer.


Image Caption: Curiosity Self Portrait with Mount Sharp at Rocknest ripple in Gale Crater. Curiosity used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the robotic arm to image herself and her target destination Mount Sharp in the background.SAM chemistry suite located on robot’s deck near Mast. To the left is the northern rim wall of Gale Crater. This color panoramic mosaic was assembled from raw images snapped on Sol 85 (Nov. 1, 2012). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Curiosity had been collecting and analyzing Martian soil samples for more than a month at a windblown ripple called ‘Rocknest’. So far Curiosity has scooped into the Martian soil five times and delivered a single sample to SAM and two to the adjacent CheMin chemistry instrument.

“This data is gonna be one for the history books,” Grotzinger went on to say to NPR. “It’s looking really good.”

JPL Press spokesman Guy Webster advises caution and patience while damping down euphoria. He told me that the team is still trying to interpret and understand the analysis from SAM and seeking to clarify their meaning before making any premature conclusions.

“This is no change from the policy with past results from the mission, such as SAM’s atmosphere analysis or CheMin’s soil sample analysis: The scientists want to gain confidence in the findings before taking them outside of the science team,” Webster informed me.

“As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books. John was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John’s office last week. He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far,” Webster said.

Organic molecules are the basis for life as we know it, and they have never before been discovered on the Red Planet’s surface. I am an organic chemist and to me the detection of organics on Mars would indeed be “Earth-shaking”. But just a finding of organics alone does NOT mean we discovered life. Organics are a prerequisite to life. Life requires finding much more complex molecules, like amino acids and far more beyond that.

Furthermore, finding signatures of organics so close to the surface might be a surprising result when one recalls that highly destructive ionizing radiation bombards the Martian topsoil 24/7.

So, it’s wise for the MSL team to be abundantly cautious and recheck their results multiple times. They wisely waited for further data before prematurely announcing the discovery of Martian methane. Initial SAM atmospheric measurements detecting methane turned out to be false – they actually originated from contamination by residual traces of Florida air trapped in the interior chambers of SAM and were carried all the way to Mars.

If organics are detected in the dusty dunes at Rocknest, the implications could be vast and potentially point to their widespread distribution across Gale crater and beyond.

As renowned astronomer Carl Sagan once said; ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Stay tuned.

Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries, SAM and NASA missions at my upcoming free public presentations:

Ken Kremer

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Dec 6: Free Public lecture titled “Atlantis, The Premature End of America’s Shuttle Program and What’s Beyond for NASA” including Curiosity, Orion, SpaceX and more by Ken Kremer at Brookdale Community College/Monmouth Museum and STAR Astronomy club in Lincroft, NJ at 8 PM

Dec 11: Free Public lecture titled “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars (in 3 D)” and more by Ken Kremer at Princeton University and the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) in Princeton, NJ at 8 PM.

Posted on by Jason Major

I Am SAM

Curiosity's SAM instrument intake tubes (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Portrait of Curiosity assembled from raw images acquired with MAHLI on Sol 85 (Nov. 11. 2012 UTC) Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems. Composite by Jason Major.

Yesterday Mars Science Laboratory principal investigator John Grotzinger set the entire space science world abuzz with a tantalizing promise of “earthshaking” news on the horizon — literally “one for the history books,” as he put it in an interview with NPR. It seems one of Curiosity’s main science tools, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, has discovered… something… within recently-gathered samples, possibly in windblown-material scooped at a site called “Rocknest” earlier this month.

For now, though, the MSL team is keeping quiet on any more details until they’re reasonably sure they know what they have. Speculations abound — some serious, some not — but the bottom line is we’ll all have to wait for the official news to be released. In the meantime, here’s your chance to learn a little more about a fascinating high-tech Mars-tasting gadget called SAM.

About the size of a window air conditioning unit, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument is contained within the front section of NASA’s Curiosity rover. Actually a suite of three instruments, SAM consists of a Gas Chromatograph (GC), a Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS), and a Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS), as well as systems that manipulate and process samples.

Annotated photo of SAM with side covers removed

Although mostly contained entirely within Curiosity, SAM does have two small inlet tubes that allow access for soil samples gathered with the rover’s arm, as well as inlets for atmospheric gases.

On Earth all of these different instruments would fill a lab. But to fit them all inside the Curiosity, which is about the size of a Mini Cooper (but only half the mass), they were painstakingly reduced in size to fit within a single rectangular structure about 40 kg (88 lbs).

Here’s how SAM’s components work:

The Gas Chromatograph (GC)

The GC has six complementary chromatographic columns. The GC assembly sorts, measures, and identifies gases it separates from mixtures of gases by pushing the mixed gases through long, coiled tubes with a stream of helium gas. It sorts the gas molecules by weight: they emerge from the tube in order from lightest (out first) to heaviest (out last). Once the gases are sorted, the GC can direct quantities of the separated gases into the QMS or TLS for further analysis.

The Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS)

The QMS identifies gases by the molecular weight and electrical charge of their ionized states. It fires high-speed electrons at the molecules, breaking them into fragments. It then sorts the fragments by weight with AC and DC electric fields. The spectra generated by the QMS detector uniquely identify the molecules in the gases.

The Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS)

The TLS uses absorption of light at specific wavelengths to measure concentrations and isotope ratios of specific chemicals important to life: methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights, and their ratios can provide information about Mars’ geologic — and possibly biologic — history.

The QMS and the GC can operate together in a GCMS mode for separation and definitive identification of organic compounds. The TLS obtains precise isotope ratios for C and O in carbon dioxide and measures trace levels of methane and its carbon isotope.

In addition to these three analytical instruments SAM also has mechanical support devices: a sample manipulation system (SMS) and a Chemical Separation and Processing Laboratory (CSPL). The CSPL includes high conductance and micro valves, gas manifolds with heaters and temperature monitors, chemical and mechanical pumps, carrier gas reservoirs and regulators, pressure monitors, pyrolysis ovens, and chemical scrubbers and getters.

The SMS has a wheel of 74 small cups where soil samples gathered by Curiosity’s robotic arm are prepared for analysis. 59 are quartz cups that are small ovens which can be heated to very high temperatures to pull gases from the powdered samples. 9 sealed cups are filled with chemical solvents for lower-temperature experiments designed to search for organic compounds. The other 9 cups contain calibration materials.

With this suite of precision tools SAM is specifically designed to search for evidence of a habitable environment on Mars, whether past or present. As it takes up over half of the rover’s scientific payload area, you could say that Curiosity itself is specifically designed to carry SAM around Mars (although we won’t tell that to the other instruments!)

Knowing only that the “exciting” news from Grotzinger and his team is coming from data gathered by SAM, one could safely assume that it has something to do with a discovery of organic chemistry of some sort… but we’ll all have to wait a few more weeks to know for sure. Still, as that is the primary objective of MSL and Curiosity is barely over 100 Martian days into its mission, even the smallest hint of big news has everyone’s attention.

Like any big institution, NASA would love to trumpet a major finding, especially at a time when budget decisions are being made.

– Joe Palca, NPR article

“This data is gonna be one for the history books,” said Grotzinger. “It’s looking really good.” (Read more here.)

Find out more about SAM and Curiosity’s other instruments here, and check out a quick video overview of SAM below:

(And for an even more in-depth look at how SAM works, read Emily Lakdawalla’s article on The Planetary Society’s blog here.)

The result of an international effort between scientists and engineers, SAM was built and tested at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Paul Mahaffy is SAM’s Principal Investigator.

Additional source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center SAM site. Inset images: SAM assembly/SAM solid sample inlets. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. 

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UPDATE: Apparently the NPR article that kickstarted all the rumors of big discoveries from Curiosity was a big misunderstanding… while data from the rover is “one for the history books,” according to P.I. John Grotzinger, that pertained to the mission as a whole — not any individual finding. Still, news from the MSL mission will be presented on Dec. 3 at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

“Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect… At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics.” – JPL news release, Nov. 29, 2012

Read more here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Has Curiosity Made an ‘Earth-Shaking’ Discovery?

This image was taken by Front Hazcam onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 102 (2012-11-18 21:41:54 UTC). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Mars Science Laboratory team has hinted that they might have some big news to share soon. But like good scientists, they are waiting until they verify their results before saying anything definitive. In an interview on NPR today, MSL Principal Investigator John Grotzinger said a recent soil sample test in the SAM instrument (Sample Analysis at Mars) shows something ‘earthshaking.’

“This data is gonna be one for the history books,” he said. “It’s looking really good.”

What could it be?

SAM is designed to investigate the chemical and isotopic composition of the Martian atmosphere and soil. In particular, SAM is looking for organic molecules, which is important in the search for life on Mars. Life as we know it cannot exist without organic molecules; however, they can exist without life. SAM will be able to detect lower concentrations of a wider variety of organic molecules than any other instrument yet sent to Mars.

As many scientists have said, both the presence and the absence of organic molecules would be important science results, as both would provide important information about the environmental conditions of Gale Crater on Mars.

But something ‘Earthshaking’ or “really good” probably wouldn’t be a nil result.

Already, the team has found evidence for huge amounts of flowing water in Gale Crater.

A detailed look at the layers on Aeolis Mons/Mt. Sharp, the central mound inside Gale Crater, the Curiosity rover’s ultimate destination. Credit: NASA/Caltech-JPL/MSSS

If SAM does find organic material, the next step would be to determine the origin and the nature of preservation of the molecules. But the team is going to wait until they verify whatever it is they found.

As NPR’s Joe Palca says in his report, “They have some exciting new results from one of the rover’s instruments. On the one hand, they’d like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.”

The team is being cautious because of their experience with looking for methane in the Martian air. When one of the SAM instruments analyzed an air sample, they got a reading of methane. But, it turned out, they were likely measuring some of the air that was brought along from Florida, as air leaked into the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) while the spacecraft was awaiting launch. The initial readings from the TLS, full of methane, were very exciting to the Curiosity scientists until they realized it was from Earth.

But NPR reports that Grotzinger says it will take several weeks before he and his team are ready to talk about their latest finding.

In the meantime there will likely be much speculation as everyone is excited about the prospects of life – past or present – on Mars. Either would have astounding implications.