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The Curiosity rover is moving to an intriguing new area on Mars in the quest to find organic salts, which could reveal more about the planet's history and if life ever existed there. ....
NASA uses various instruments of its Curiosity rover to detect organic salts on the Red Planet. Here's why.In the dry plains on the surface of Mars, there ....
While NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to crawl over the reddish, radiation-blasted wasteland, organic geochemist James M.T. Lewis is in search of salts through its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) lab and Chemistry and Mineralogy Instrument (CheMin) on board. He led a study recently published in “On Earth, life is one of the processes that can concentrate organic salts,” Lewis tells SYFY WIRE. “Any process on Mars that concentrates organic salts and organic matter is really interesting to us. We re saying that organic salts are a really good explanation for a lot of SAM data, but we aren t yet completely sure if they re present, and if they are, what forms they might be in.” ....
Organic salts on Mars hint at ancient microbial life on the Red Planet If the finding is confirmed, it would be some strong evidence pointing at ancient life on Mars. Reset NASA has announced that certain organic salts are “likely present” on Mars. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that the salts were created by life on Mars (other processes can also produce the substances), it definitely makes it much likelier. This look back at a dune that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove across was taken by the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Feb. 9, 2014 – the 538th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s mission. Image credits: NASA / JPL. ....
Share A NASA team has found that organic salts are likely present on Mars. Like shards of ancient pottery, these salts are the chemical remnants of organic compounds, such as those previously detected by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Organic compounds and salts on Mars could have formed by geologic processes or be remnants of ancient microbial life. Besides adding more evidence to the idea that there once was organic matter on Mars, directly detecting organic salts would also support modern-day Martian habitability, given that on Earth, some organisms can use organic salts, such as oxalates and acetates, for energy. “If we determine that there are organic salts concentrated anywhere on Mars, we’ll want to investigate those regions further, and ideally drill deeper below the surface where organic matter could be better preserved,” said James M. T. Lewis, an organic geochemist who led the research, published on March 30 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. ....