When Curiosity goes looking for constituent molecules in Mars ’s solid surface , it vaporizes a rock music sample and sniffs the gasoline that comes out . The programme could begoing awrythanks to a pesky piddling mineral called jarosite .
Jarosite unblock an oxygen speck when it is heated up . Oxygen is very responsive , so it goes look for other molecules to bind to . In that unconscious process , oxygen can react with constituent molecule and split them before our instruments can find their bearing , and any grounds is function a rip secondly before we can tell if it ’s even there .
New Scientist describes an experimentby James Lewis recently publish in Astrobiology . Lewis had gotten some jarosite powerful here on Earth — on Brownsea Island in Dorset .
Lewis removed layers of rock rich in both jarosite and organic fertilizer from cliff faces on the island and brought them back to the lab to grind them into pulverisation and heat up them . He heated the gunpowder from 400 to 1000 oC in 100 oC increase , to find out which compounds appeared at each temperature . This is similar to the technique used in Curiosity ’s SAM ( Sample Analysis at Mars ) pawn .
“ We never detected the organics we knew were in the sample , ” he says . Instead , they saw sulphur dioxide , carbon dioxide , carbon monoxide and urine – what you would expect if the jarosite oppose with the organics and broke them down into other carbon paper compounds .
That ’s the bad intelligence . The good news show is that jarosite is n’t abundant everywhere on Mars ’s surface , and some forms may not release oxygen until higher temperature than the rover employ . It could also be potential , with some extra tec work , to put together together the original molecule base on their byproducts . That , and Curiosity has another instrument for detecting constituent speck in the air rather than in rocks , which foundmethane burstsin Mars ’s atmosphere last yr .
Curiosity ’s lookup for constituent molecules in Mars ’s rocks could be ironically destroying the very molecule its look for , but the niggling rover and its human scientists do have some other tricks up their arm . Hopefully those tricks do n’t have any mysterious , self - defeating caveat . [ New Scientist , Astrobiology ]
Top image : NASA / JPL - Caltech
Mars
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