NASA to unveil new Mars discoveries by Curiosity

Okay of all places, Fox News just announced that Nasa has found "life" on ancient mars from a rock it collected last month and tested it on its on board laboratory!!! I just cannot believe I heard this from Fox of all places.. I don't have any links because they said it as a runoff side story but very interesting, would love to see more, I will be searching for links!


www.jpl.nasa.gov...

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." Clues to this habitable environment come from data returned by the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments. The data indicate the Yellowknife Bay area the rover is exploring was the end of an ancient river system or an intermittently wet lake bed that could have provided chemical energy and other favorable conditions for microbes. The rock is made up of a fine-grained mudstone containing clay minerals, sulfate minerals and other chemicals. This ancient wet environment, unlike some others on Mars, was not harshly oxidizing, acidic or extremely salty. The patch of bedrock where Curiosity drilled for its first sample lies in an ancient network of stream channels descending from the rim of Gale Crater. The bedrock also is fine-grained mudstone and shows evidence of multiple periods of wet conditions, including nodules and veins. Curiosity's drill collected the sample 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 percent of the composition of this sample," said David Blake, principal investigator for the CheMin instrument at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. These clay minerals are a product of the reaction of relatively fresh water with igneous minerals, such as olivine, also present in the sediment. The reaction could have taken place within the sedimentary deposit, during transport of the sediment, or in the source region of the sediment. The presence of calcium sulfate along with the clay suggests the soil is neutral or mildly alkaline. Scientists were surprised to find a mixture of oxidized, less-oxidized, and even non-oxidized chemicals, providing an energy gradient of the sort many microbes on Earth exploit to live. This partial oxidation was first hinted at when the drill cuttings were revealed to be gray rather than red. "The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms," said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator of the SAM suite of instruments at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. An additional drilled sample will be used to help confirm these results for several of the trace gases analyzed by the SAM instrument. "We have characterized a very ancient, but strangely new 'gray Mars' where conditions once were favorable for life," said John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "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." Scientists plan to work with Curiosity in the "Yellowknife Bay" area for many more weeks before beginning a long drive to Gale Crater's central mound, Mount Sharp. Investigating the stack of layers exposed on Mount Sharp, where clay minerals and sulfate minerals have been identified from orbit, may add information about the duration and diversity of habitable conditions. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project has been using Curiosity to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater ever has offered an environment favorable for microbial life. Curiosity, carrying 10 science instruments, landed seven months ago to begin its two-year prime mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Not sure what all the hum bug is about..
Not sure people are "getting it"

Maybe you were expecting life? Fossils? Thats not the mission.

If the PH levels were high then say by by to any possibility of life ever existing on mars,
That is the news we could have gotten today

Cheer up

Was there any mention at the press conference about the condition of the computers, and if there is hope of getting back full function on computer one? Thanks.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

However I'm not going to expect anything earth shattering.

Nope.
Just Mars rock shattering.

Ba dum dum

edit on 3/11/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Phage made a joke!!!!!!

Originally posted by Aleister
Was there any mention at the press conference about the condition of the computers, and if there is hope of getting back full function on computer one? Thanks.

B side is up and running, they think they can fix the memory problem with the A side. They have to upload new patches, then will runs tests on them after that.

Right now Curiosity is in standby mode due to solar flares that were to hit Mars. It's in the article.

Originally posted by timetothink
But what about the life forms that look like rocks??

They will have to crack open the lizard later on to see if there is any rocks inside.

Originally posted by canucks555
Not sure what all the hum bug is about..
Not sure people are "getting it"

Maybe you were expecting life? Fossils? Thats not the mission.

If the PH levels were high then say by by to any possibility of life ever existing on mars,
That is the news we could have gotten today

Cheer up

But that SHOULD be the mission. We already have sent the Viking landers in the 70's with all kinds of instruments and spectrometers. We then had the Mars Pathfinder mission in the 90's....and then of course there's Spirit and Opportunity. Oh, I forgot about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter...

Why are we still sending probes to tell us the same information about the air, geology and atmosphere!?

We SHOULD be looking for signs of life! ARUGH!

Originally posted by MystikMushroom

Originally posted by canucks555
Not sure what all the hum bug is about..
Not sure people are "getting it"

Maybe you were expecting life? Fossils? Thats not the mission.

If the PH levels were high then say by by to any possibility of life ever existing on mars,
That is the news we could have gotten today

Cheer up

But that SHOULD be the mission. We already have sent the Viking landers in the 70's with all kinds of instruments and spectrometers. We then had the Mars Pathfinder mission in the 90's....and then of course there's Spirit and Opportunity. Oh, I forgot about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter...

Why are we still sending probes to tell us the same information about the air, geology and atmosphere!?

We SHOULD be looking for signs of life! ARUGH!

They are, but it's just not that simple. They can't program a rover computer to be able to discern all of the subtle evidence that might be there, so what they have to do is continue gathering more proof of the larger picture. Having a rover looking at unknown rocks for pieces of rock (that's what fossils are really) that are in the shape of an alien life form that we have no idea what shape it would take to begin with would not really be feasible.

This proves, conclusively, that (at least in some areas) Mars did indeed once possess the right ingredients for life as we know it. That's a big thing.

They say they have found things that 'could' support life. Quite plausible, the universe it's full of matter. But they say it could support life wow , yay, gosh!!!!

But the reality is......... it doesn't support life, because there isn't any !!!!

It's like putting a piece of glass, a spring, some metal and some numbers in a box and saying it could be a watch !.

So much for intelligence science. Always scratching at the desire to prove what they can't.

Even evolution is still a theory and the intelligent ones know that, but the unintelligent ones think it's proved.

Of course people will say you can't prove God. True, I can't prove physically that which exists in another dimension. If I could you would be 'forced' to believe what is in front of you. But science is trying to prove what happened in this dimension and still can't. That's why I enjoy these debates. What you think of me matters little to me, but you can prove nothing of what you believe in hope. It's almost like a religion of it's own.