Mars, Molecules and Methane...

Curiosity's "Space Selfie," Wikipedia. Video: The Telegraph

Reuters - NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has found carbon-containing compounds in samples drilled out of an ancient rock, the first definitive detection of organics on the surface of Earth’s neighbor planet, scientists said on Tuesday.

The rover also found spurts of methane gas in the atmosphere, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life. Additional studies, which may be beyond the rover’s capabilities, are needed to determine if the organic compounds and/or the methane gas were produced by past or present life on Mars or if they stem from geochemical processes.

“We have had a major discovery. We have found organics on Mars,” Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said during a webcast press conference at a science meeting in San Francisco.

“The probability of any of these things being sources (from life) ... we just have to respect that it is a possibility,” he added.

Reuters Science:
NASA rover finds organic molecules, methane gas on Mars, Irene Klotz

Yesterday on Mars...

Images by NASA; Panorama by The New York Times
The shadow of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, looking toward the base of Mount Sharp, which rises more than three miles above the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater floor.

About 3.5 billion years ago — around the time life is thought to have first arisen on Earth — Mars had a large freshwater lake that might well have been hospitable to life, scientists reported Monday.

The lake lay in the same crater where NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity landed last year and has been exploring ever since. It lasted for hundreds or thousands of years, and possibly much longer.

Whether any life ever appeared on Mars is not yet known, and Curiosity was not designed to answer that question. But the data coming back from the planet indicate that the possibility of life, at least in the ancient past, is at least plausible.

John P. Grotzinger, a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology who is the project scientist for the Curiosity mission, said that if certain microbes like those on present-day Earth had plopped into that ancient Martian lake, they would most likely have found a pleasant place to call home.

NY Times: Ancient Martian Lake May Have Supported Life, Kenneth Chang
Related Posts on #P4TC (note: some embeds no longer available)

Happy Birthday NASA...

NASA turns 55 today.

It was the response to Sputnik, the space race to the moon that so many that weren't alive then now deny happened, and its significance to the technological world it helped birth. That response was an investment in science education by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it inspired a generation of scientists and engineers that well...produced people like me.

It was spin offs from government research, like...the DARPA project that brought us the Internet, the transistor specifically for the space program; the personal computer; calculators; remote control, cell phones; flat screens; Velcro! Those that hate government are the same that hate socialism, yet shout with shrill sincerity "don't touch my medicare/medicaid"! This so similar to the same inane illogical rants against tenets of science and Entropy; online tirades against science USING tools created by science to do it. If anyone reading this is using social media in these jeremiads, you are guilty of breathtaking hypocrisy.

Though Hispanic Heritage Month, I have delayed the post of the distinguished scientist and educator until tomorrow. I did not want to associate her with the unthinkable. The unthinkable happened last night for the 2nd time in 17 years. The unthinkable is now extortion tactic; government by bully; uncertainty no longer Heisenberg's principle; it is like the conclusion of a terrific series: "breaking bad." Instead of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," we edify the "Anarchist's Cookbook." The anarchists are about to affect real people, that you and I know. One is my college classmate: an electrical engineer for the US Navy in California.

There is a sickness in this nation; a disease of ignorance that is promoted and openly celebrated. Our "reality stars" need no training in acting or performance; our musicians no training in how to read or write music; our politicians no intellectual rigor in philosophy nor training in the importance of science and technology. The more ignorant you are of history, science, reality, the more you are in this American dispensation celebrated.

Happy birthday, NASA. You are now furloughed with Curiosity and 800,000 government workers.

Warp factor...none.

October 1 is our nation's space agency's 55th birthday. To celebrate, NASA employees can, well, do whatever they want, just as long as they don't do their jobs.

NASA, as President Obama put it in his afternoon remarks, will "shut down almost entirely" if a faction of congressional Republicans succeeds in preventing a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open from coming to the House floor for a vote.

According to The Washington Post, just 549 of NASA's 18,250 employees will be expected to work if the government shuts down. The remainder -- 17,701 people -- will be furloughed.

Even Curiosity, our rover on Mars, will face its own little robot furlough: The explorer will "be put in a protective mode" for the duration of the shutdown, and will not collect any new data during that time.

The Atlantic: Dear NASA, Happy Birthday! To Celebrate, We're Shutting You Down. Love, Congress

Phobos Eclipse...

Images taken with a telephoto-lens camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity catch the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passing directly in front of the sun -- the sharpest images of a solar eclipse ever taken at Mars.

The images are the first full-resolution frames downlinked to Earth from an Aug. 17, 2013, series. The series may later provide a movie of the eclipse. Curiosity paused during its drive that day to record the sky-watching images.

"This event occurred near noon at Curiosity's location, which put Phobos at its closest point to the rover, appearing larger against the sun than it would at other times of day," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, a co-investigator for use of Curiosity's Mastcam. "This is the closest to a total eclipse of the sun that you can have from Mars."

DEIMOS (or Deimus) was the god (daimon) of fear, dread and terror, and his twin-brother PHOBOS (Phobus) of panic fear, flight and battlefield rout. reference

Mars has two known moons, Phobos and Deimos,[1] which are thought to be captured asteroids.[2] Both satellites were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall[3] and are named after the characters Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimos (terror/dread) who, in Greek mythology, accompanied their father Ares, god of war, into battle. Ares was known as Mars to the Romans. It is possible that Mars may have moons smaller than 50 – 100 meters and a dust ring between Phobos and Deimos may be present but none have been discovered.[4] Wikipedia

Science Daily: NASA Mars rover views eclipse of the sun by Phobos

Esperance...

Note: the NEWSY embed refers to Curiosity, not Opportunity as the article elucidates. Wonder if Space.com caught this discontinuity? (NEWSY is correct)

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has made perhaps the biggest discovery of its nearly 10-year career, finding evidence that life may have been able to get a foothold on the Red Planet long ago.

The Opportunity rover spotted clay minerals in an ancient rock on the rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater, suggesting that benign, neutral-pH water once flowed through the area, scientists said.

"This is water you could drink," Opportunity principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University told reporters today (June 7), explaining why the rock, dubbed "Esperance," stands out from other water-soaked stones the rover has studied.

Space.com: Rover Finds New Evidence That Ancient Mars Was Habitable

Martian Life!...

This set of images compares rocks seen by NASA's Opportunity rover and Curiosity rover at two different parts of Mars. On the left is " Wopmay" rock, in Endurance Crater, Meridiani Planum, as studied by the Opportunity rover. On the right are the rocks of the "Sheepbed" unit in Yellowknife Bay, in Gale Crater, as seen by Curiosity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/MSSS

PASADENA, Calif. -- An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.

Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.

"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "From what we know now, the answer is yes."

NASA: NASA Rover Finds Conditions Once Suited for Ancient Life on Mars