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<keyword id="173214" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="the-US">The US</keyword> space agency <keyword id="6360409" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="NASA">NASA</keyword>’s rover <keyword id="69295" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Curiosity">Curiosity</keyword> reached its destination Mount Sharp after wandering in the Martian desert for about 25 months. The arrival of the rover at Mount Sharp starts the original mission of the <keyword id="621657" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars-Science-Laboratory">Mars Science Laboratory</keyword> rover--to read the mountain's clay-rich lower layers like pages in a history book. <br /><br />

	According to scientists, the analysis of these layers could expose the presence of life-affable environments on the Red Planet.
<br /><br /> "We have finally arrived at the far frontier that we have sought for so long," said <keyword id="1172759" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="John-Grotzinger">John Grotzinger</keyword>, a <keyword id="2517894" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="project-scientist-and-Caltech-geologist">project scientist and Caltech geologist</keyword>. <br /><br /> The trip to Mount Sharp was delayed for few months as the rover took a diversion at a hopeful spot named Yellowknife Bay. Although it charge the team at <keyword id="324773" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jet-Propulsion-Laboratory">Jet Propulsion Laboratory</keyword> on half a year, the venture finally paid off. The drilling of the rocks there exposed a smorgasbord of chemical elements that would have been appropriate for microbial life, if it ever survived. <br /><br />

	"Now that the scientists know livable environments did survive on the Red Planet, part of the next step will be seeking those fastidious environments that have a most probability of protecting organic molecules," stated Grotzinger.

	(Image: NASA)

Mars Rover Curiosity Completes An Incredible Journey, Reaches Mount Sharp

<p></p>
<p>That's according to a team of NASA scientists at a press conference at this year's meeting of the American Geophysical Union.</p>
<p>"That we detect methane in the atmosphere on Mars is not an argument that we have found evidence of life on Mars, but it is one of the few hypothesis that we can propose that we must consider as we go forward in the future," said NASA Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology, said during the press conference.</p>
<p>So, the find isn't a smoking gun of life on the Red planet, but it is a good sign.</p>
<h2>Methane on Mars</h2>
<p>Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory has been sniffing the Martian atmosphere for the last 20 months. Over that period, SAM detected an unusually high amount of methane in the air a total of four different times.</p>
<p>The high levels of the gas were ten times stronger than the average amount of methane Curiosity has detected during its time on Mars, as shown in the graph below:</p>
<p></p>
<p>In the past, instruments like the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft have measured even higher levels of atmospheric methane from 15 parts per billion all over the planet up to 45 parts per billion near the north pole, <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/curiosity-rover-sniffs-martian-methane-1.16578">explains reporter Alex Witze in Nature</a>. These measurements are taken farther up in the atmosphere than Curiosity, which is sitting on the surface. That difference could play a role in why the concentration fluctuates.<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/curiosity-rover-sniffs-martian-methane-1.16578"></a></p>
<p>Scientists have failed to explain the different patterns and varying levels of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere, and Curiosity's latest results just add more to the mystery.</p>
<p>"This temporary increase in methane - sharply up and then back down - tells us there must be some relatively localized source," <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4413">said Sushil Atreya in a statement</a>. Atreya is a scientist based at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a member of the Curiosity rover <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."</p>
<p>The Curiosity team doesn't know whether the methane is making its way into the air from sources that are above the surface, below the surface, or perhaps wafted from somewhere else entirely.</p>
<p>As shown in the graphic below, there are three primary sources that the scientists are exploring:</p>
<ol>
<li>Comets, which contain methane, could be the source upon impacting the Martian surface.</li>
<li>Geological processes could have produced pockets of methane underground that are now being released near Curiosity's location.</li>
<li>Or the most exciting prospect could be that the methane is a byproduct from bacteria.</li>
</ol>
<p></p>
<p>Although the news is an exciting step forward in determining whether Mars once harbored life, it's going to take more than a rover to make any final conclusions, according to some listening in on today's press conference.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/EllenStofan">@EllenStofan</a> really determining if Mars ever evolved life will require people &amp; labs &amp; rock hammers on surface of Mars <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AGU14?src=hash">#AGU14</a></p>
- The Earth Story (@TheEarthStory) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheEarthStory/status/544649439185752065">December 16, 2014</a>
</blockquote>

Curiosity Rover Witnessed Mysterious Methane Spikes On Mars - A Tantalizing Clue That It Could Hold Life

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source"><keyword id="6360409" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="NASA">NASA</keyword></p><p class="caption"><keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword> is cold and dry today, but three billion years ago it may have been flowing with water.</p></div>NASA scientists <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mars-curiosity-rover-rock-sample-analysis-2013-3">confirmed on Tuesday that Mars could have once supported microbial life</a>. </p>
<p>The results comes from a powder rock sample that the Curiosity rover collected in early February. </p>
<p>In that sample, they found traces of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon — all the necessary ingredients to support microbes.  </p>
<p>The sample came from bedrock that was once water-soaked, as evidenced by the all the concretions, David Blake, principal investigator for Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy investigation, said in a press conference.  </p>
<p>Of the Red Planet's habitability, Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger said: "We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and so supportive of life that if this water had been around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,"</p>
<p>This is probably the most exciting news to come out of the Curiosity mission since the car-size robot landed on the planet's surface last August. The purpose of the $2.5-billion robot is to look for environmental conditions that could support life.</p>
<p>The discovery allows us to imagine a very different Mars from the cold, dry <span>place that exists today — one that may have supported a</span> fresh water lake some three billion years ago, for example.  </p>
<p>The next step is to collect another powder rock sample to hopefully confirm the results of the first sample. </p>

NASA Scientist: You Would Have Been Able To Drink The Water On Mars

<p><div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="NASA" title_caption="This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. " class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/50f5b6276bb3f7590e00001f-960/pia16567_fig1.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a></div><p class="source"><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16567">NASA</a></p><p class="caption">This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site for <keyword id="6360409" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="NASA">NASA</keyword>'s <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword> rover <keyword id="69295" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Curiosity">Curiosity</keyword>. </p></div>The Curiosity rover is gearing up for its biggest engineering task since landing on the surface Mars: Drilling into a rock on the Red Planet. </p>
<p>The mission team has identified a flat rock within a depression called Yellowknife Bay as the first drilling target. </p>
<p><span>The drilling site is named "John Klein," after a Mars <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. </span></p>
<p>The area chosen is full of fractures and ridge-like veins that protrude above the surface. Scientists were first drawn to the spot by orbital observations that showed that this area of <span>fractured ground cools more slowly than other terrain types, such as Curiosity's landing site, a dry streambed about a third of a mile west of Yellowknife Bay. </span></p>
<p>"The orbital signal drew us here, but what we found when we arrived has been a great surprise," <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-020#12">project scientist John Grotzinger said in a statement</a>. "This area had a different type of wet environment than the streambed where we landed, maybe a few different types of wet environments."</p>
<p>In a press conference today, Curiosity Project Manager Richard Cook was hesitant to nail down a hard date for when drilling would begin (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/curiosity-distracted-by-shiny-object-2012-10">Curiosity is known to get distracted</a>), but indicated that drilling should begin within the next two weeks if everything goes as planned.</p>
<p>Curiosity will drive up to the rock within the next few days. The first powdered samples that the rover collects by drilling into the rock will be used to clean out the drill. Then it will take another sample, dropping off the equivalent of half an aspirin tablet to the ChemMin and SAM instruments, which will determine the chemical composition of the Martian rock.</p>

Curiosity Prepares For Its Biggest Engineering Task Since Landing On Mars

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source"> NASA/JPL-Caltech</p></div>After seven months of roaming around the Red Planet, <keyword id="6360409" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="NASA">NASA</keyword>'s car-size robot, called <keyword id="69295" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Curiosity">Curiosity</keyword>, has finally provided evidence that <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword> could have once supported microbial life, the <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> agency announced in a press conference from Washington D.C. on Tuesday.</p>
<p>The first powder rock sample ever collected on Mars had traces of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon, scientists found. These elements are considered necessary to support life on Earth.</p>
<p>"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and so supportive of life that if this water had been around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger told reporters.</p>
<p>The rover used the drill on her robotic arm to make a small hole in a flat rock named "John Klein" in early February. The drill churned up the rock into powder and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-sample-from-a-rock-on-mars-isnt-red--its-white-2013-2">extracted about a tablespoon of powder material</a></p>
<p>The sample was then delivered to two lab instruments on the rover — the  Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument — to determine what it's made of.</p>
<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source">NASA</p></div>The drilling site was chosen because it had evidence that indicated the sediment was once water-soaked.</p>
<p>The image to the right is a side-by-side comparison of X-ray diffraction patterns of two different samples collected from the Martian surface. The right image, drill powder collected by Curiosity at John Klein, is different due to the presence of clay minerals called  phyllosillicates. About 20 to 30 percent of the sample was made of clay minerals. These form in the presence of water that is not too acidic or salty — in other words a potentially habitable environment.  </p>
<p>The first scoop also showed that the ground underneath Mars' dusty orange-red surface is actually green-gray, meaning it is not highly oxidized and could contain preserved organic material. Mars looks red because the top layer is mostly made of iron oxide, or iron that rusted after being exposed to oxygen.  </p>
<p>NASA's $2.5-billion rover landed in Mars' Gale Crater in August 2012. She's currently parked in an area called Yellowknife Bay inside of Gale crater. The six-wheeled robot will hang out there for a few more weeks to collect another sample that will hopefully confirm the results of the first sample. Then she's headed for a spot near the base of Mount Sharpe, which rises up from the center of Gale crater.</p>

Yes, Mars Could Have Once Supported Life!

<p>Curiosity has got a new mountain to climb, and will soon have mountains of data to share. The Mars rover has just arrived at the base of Mount Sharp, at the center of Gale Crater, NASA announced today.</p>
<p>Scientists are hopeful that the silicon-rich rock of Mount Sharp, which is roughly the size of Mount Rainier in Washington, will provide a window into tens of millions of years of Martian history - and reveal whether the Red Planet once hosted life.</p>
<p>"We have finally arrived at the far frontier that we have sought for so long," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger.</p>
<p>This is what that frontier looks like. This image from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows the "Amargosa Valley," on the slopes leading up to Mount Sharp.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>And this is where Curiosity is headed into the mountain range. the rover had to switch routes because her <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/curiosity-rover-wheels-wear-and-tear-2013-12">wheels weren't holding up as well as scientists hoped</a> - leading her to smoother terrain.</p>
<p>The route of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover up the slopes of Mount Sharp on Mars is shown in yellow in this false-color image.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The rover will explore the Pahrump Hills and onto what's called the Murray Formation, which forms the base of Mount Sharp.</p>
<p>During the trip and at the Murray Foundation, scientists hope to find more rocks like the one below, which suggests that the Red Planet wasn't always so red. This rock, named Bonanza King, is located across the boundary that defines the base of Mount Sharp.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The "Bonanza King" rock was found to contain an abundance of silicon, indicating an aqueous environment in the past that might have played host to Martian microbes. You can see below how "Bonanza King" stacks up against other rocks that Curiosity has investigated.</p>
<p>The chart shows the silicon and aluminum content of the rocks that Curiosity has analyzed so far:<div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image"></div><p></p></div>"At the Murray Formation, we potentially have millions to tens of millions of years of Martian history just waiting for us to explore," said Curiosity Rover Mission Scientist Kathryn Stack.</p>
<p>"If the past two years of Curiosity's exploration are any indication, we're going to see things, exciting things that we've never seen before and couldn't possibly have anticipated," she added.</p>

The Mars Rover Curiosity Has Finally Arrived At Her Destination

<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes" title_caption="The Curiosity rover mission team celebrates the landing of the car-size robot on the surface of Mars at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012. " class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53a4565269bedd5540fa45f4-960/ap285836030145.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes</span></p><p class="caption">The Curiosity rover mission team celebrates the landing of the car-size robot on the surface of Mars at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012. </p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>On Aug. 5, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/where-to-watch-mars-rover-curiosity-land-2012-8" target="_blank">touched down on the surface</a> of Mars. Its mission: To find out if Mars could have once supported life. Now the car-size rover's prime mission has officially come to an end on Tuesday, June 24.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean Curiosity will be put out to pasture. She'll still be doing <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> on Mars and returning crucial data about the atmosphere and surface of the cold, red planet.</p>
<p>As the main investigation comes to a close, we spoke to chief scientist John Grotzinger, who has been directing the mission from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He talked about Curiosity's biggest discoveries and one of the darkest moments during the mission.</p>
<p class="p1"><em>[A lightly edited transcript of the interview follows]</em></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>Business Insider:</strong> How are you feeling now?</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>John <span>Grotzinger</span>:</strong> We feel really great about what we've been able to do. We're hopeful that NASA will continue the mission. We are in the stretch of the fastest driving that we've done the entire mission so far. Now we're trying to get toward Mount Sharp. We've had 16 papers published and two papers in Science magazine. We met all of the goals in advance. It doesn't feel like mission over.</p>
<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" title_caption="This is the first self-portrait Curiosity took after landing on Mars. It's a bit fuzzy, but the pictures got better as the mission progressed." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/502336aa6bb3f79e6c000005-960/curiosity-2.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/674861main_pia16012-full_full.jpg">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">This is the first self-portrait Curiosity took after landing on Mars. It's a bit fuzzy, but the pictures got better as the mission progressed.</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p class="p2"><strong>BI:</strong> The last two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, also outlived their prime mission, by many, many years. Why is the main investigation so short if you know the machines can beat these expectations and how long do you expect Curiosity to last?</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>JG:</strong> NASA defines a set of objectives that the spacecraft is supposed to achieve within a timeframe, which was one Mars year or a little less than two years for Curiosity. The warranty on Curiosity expires in June, but we can see Curiosity's vital signs working really well so we expect it to keep going. Curiosity is different than past rovers because it doesn't have solar power, it has nuclear power. The way we generate power is that the radioactive device generates heat. There's a device called the thermocouple, which converts heat to electricity. We can monitor its lifespan. We know we are going to get another good five years. After another seven years, we are going to be generating enough power to keep vehicle going, but not too much more. In 10 years, we expect to see significant degradation.</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>BI:</strong> What is the Curiosity team going to do now?</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>JG:</strong> A lot of team is now going to transition over to the <a href="http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mars2020/" target="_blank">Mars 2020</a> mission. That's the year it's going to launch. I'm going to stick with Curiosity and make sure we make it to the base of Mount Sharp.</p>
<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Getty Images" title_caption="Flight director Bobak Ferdowsi became an Internet sensation on the night of the rover landing because of his stars-and-stripes mohawk." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/512707336bb3f7500f000004-960/bobak-6.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Flight director Bobak Ferdowsi became an Internet sensation on the night of the rover landing because of his stars-and-stripes mohawk.</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>BI: </strong>How do you feel attached to Curiosity besides being the lead investigator?</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>JG:</strong> You can't help but become emotionally attached to these robots even though they are mechanical devices. When something happens to Curiosity we not only feel the impact of the vehicle on Mars, but also on collective collaboration here. We watch everything she does. We watch the previous Mars rover, Opportunity, as she gets older and the same thing will eventually happen to Curiosity.</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>BI: </strong>Can you sum up the top three discoveries of the prime mission?</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>JG:</strong> The number one thing would be discovering evidence of habitability, meaning that we found an ancient environment where microorganisms could have lived and reproduced. If life ever evolved on Mars, this would have been place of it.</p>
<p class="p2">The second would be discovering and confirming something that had been guessed at in the 1970s: Mars lost a lot of its atmosphere billions of years ago. It became the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-mars-looked-like-4-billion-years-ago-2013-11">planet it is today</a> probably around 3 billion years ago.</p>
<p class="p2"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="NASA/JPL-Caltech" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/50d4a455ecad044368000009-960/mars rover-1.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p class="p1">Third, the place that we discovered that was habitable was younger than what we thought. What we though had been the "goldilocks window," the time when the planet was habitable, was broader than what we thought before.</p>
<p class="p2"><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">BI: </strong>Is there one day throughout the mission or challenge you faced that you would never want to relive again?</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>JG:</strong> Back in December, we had just published a series of papers that had proven the evidence of habitability early on. It even made the cover of Science. Two days later, I was alerted of pictures that showed the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/curiosity-rover-wheels-wear-and-tear-2013-12">wheels had holes in them</a>. The place we had landed in was very hazardous to the wheels. We got a flat on Mars. We developed a strategy to work around it and now are safely driving. But I would not want to go through that again. We had to stop driving when what we wanted to be doing was driving. We went from the greatest emotional high to the greatest emotion low in two days. It would have been nice to bask in glow of success a little longer.</p>
<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="NASA" title_caption="The red circles highlight tears in one of Curiosity's tires." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53a4996f69bedde556228d89-960/curiosity-2-4.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>NASA</span></p><p class="caption">The red circles highlight tears in one of Curiosity's tires.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>BI: </strong>In the first year of the mission you said something to a reporter about a discovery that Curiosity made, which got picked up by other media (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mars-rover-curiosity-major-discovery-2012-11">including us</a>) and somewhat blown out of proportion. What have you learned about the power of social media in this process?</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>JG:</strong> Social media is a wonderful thing. The overwhelming majority is so positive because the things you discover can be shared. We made the decision to return all images so people get to enjoy Mars the way they want. You do have to learn to be careful and explicit about what you mean.</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>BI: </strong>How soon do you think we'll be able to put a person on Mars?</p>
<p><strong>JG:</strong> The first thing we have to do is figure out how to bring rocks back. The difference between the moon and Mars is that the moon is a small body. With propulsion, it doesn't take much energy to get off he surface. But Mars is big and it has gravity. You have to learn how to build a vehicle that can go to Mars, land successfully, and then lift off. But first we have to figure out the simple challenge of taking a 20 kilogram rock and lifting it off the surface of the planet.</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>BI:</strong> Do believe in programs like Mars One?</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>JG:</strong> In principle it's possible.</p>
<p class="p2"><strong>BI:</strong> How are celebrating the end of the prime mission?</p>
<p>There's going to be a big celebration on June 26. Engineers feel like they have delivered on their promise and built a vehicle that lasted a long time. Yes, there will be champagne.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">Curiosity weighs about 1 ton and is around the size of SUV.</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>BI:</strong> Where is Curiosity going now?</p>
<p>We have 4 to 6 months of driving and are making great progress. We're going to try to get to Mount Sharp by the end of the calendar year.</p>

Mars Rover's Chief Scientist Talks About The Day He Wish He Could Forget

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword></p><p class="caption"><keyword id="69295" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Curiosity">Curiosity</keyword> used its scoop to collect a sample of Martian soil at an area called Rocknest. The fifth scoop was fed into an instrument called SAM, which determined that there is a high percentage of water in Martian soil.</p></div><p></p></div>A tidal wave of data from samples of Martian soil and rock analyzed by the Curiosity rover was released Thursday in a <a href="(www.sciencemag.org/%20extra/curiosity" target="_blank">series of five reports</a>.</p>
<p>The findings center on a pyramid-shaped rock named "Jack_M" and scoops of material taken from a sand dune called Rocknest, where Curiosity spent about one month hanging out last September.</p>
<p>The information is exciting because "scientists used all of the instruments on Curiosity in one place," said David Blake, the lead author of one <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/1239505" target="_blank">paper</a> published in Science and the principal investigator for Curiosity's ChemMin instrument.</p>
<p>That makes this the most well-studied area on <keyword id="47638" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mars">Mars</keyword>, using the car-size robot. </p>
<p>"We know the elemental composition of the material from a tool called the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer. We know the minerals in the material from the ChemMin X-ray, and we know the volatiles in the material from an instrument called the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)," explains Blake. </p>
<p>In one <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1238937" target="_blank">study</a>, scientists found about 2% water from a scoop of soil collected at Rocknest. The material was fed into SAM and heated to 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit to release gases. These gases tell the scientists how much water was in the sample to begin with.</p>
<p>Mars is unique because the chemical composition of the soil is pretty much the same around the entire planet - so it's a good bet that soil in any given area is similar to soil in other areas. "It's likely that the conclusions that we draw from this material will be similar to soil found on all of Mars," said Blake.</p>
<p>The finding is good news for when we send people to Mars since "they could scoop up the soil anywhere on the surface, heat it just a bit, and obtain water," the study's lead author Laurie Leshin, <a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/emb_releases/2013-09/rpi-nmr092013.php" target="_blank">said in a statement</a>.</p>
<p>In another study, scientists learned that a rock named "Jake_M" represents a previously unknown type of Martian magma. </p>
<p>"Jake_M compares very closely with an uncommon terrestrial rock type known as a mugearite, typically found on ocean islands and in rift zones," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger wrote in an introduction to the series of reports. "It probably originates from magmas generated by low degrees of partial melting at high pressure of possibly water-rich, chemically altered martian mantle that is different from the sources of other known martian basalts."</p>
<p>Since mugearites are formed in the presence of water on Earth, this adds to the growing body of research that there could be water deep beneath the surface of Mars.</p>

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