Last week, NASA presented the evidence found by the Mars Curiosity Rover that long ago the conditions on Mars were favorable to life. Now, further findings presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference suggest that those conditions extended beyond the site where Curiosity made the rock drilling.
The Mast Camera (Mastcam), one of the Mars Rover Curiosity instruments, can also be used to detect minerals and signs of hydration. Some iron-bearing minerals can be found and mapped using the Mastcam filters which operate on frequencies in the near-infrared. The different brightness at different near-infrared wavelengths may indicate the presence of hydrated minerals.
The observations made it possible to detect signs of hydration in many rocks in the area called “Yellowknife Bay” and those are hydrated minerals different from the clay-bearing ones in the rock matrix that surrounds the area.
Another instrument was used in this research, the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN), built by the Russian Space Agency to measure hydrogen, ice and water on the surface or close to it. DAN’s detections suggest that the hydrogen found is mainly part of water molecules bound to the minerals.
Another type of analysis was performed with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), an instrument of the Mars Rover Curiosity built by the Canadian Space Agency, which analyzes the spectrum of the X-rays emitted by samples that are irradiated with alpha particles. After removing the dust on the surface, it was possible to analyze the basalt rocks, which very probably have been fragmented, transported, re-deposited as sedimentary particles and altered from a mineralogical point of view by the exposure to water.
The continuation of those investigations is delayed by the computer problems experienced by the Mars Rover Curiosity and a solar flare. On Saturday there was an additional problem to the computer currently in operation that made Curiosity re-enter the so-called “safe mode”. The analysis of the problem has detected a minor software issue in reading a file that can be deleted anyway because it’s no longer needed.
The research will just be delayed but at this point there are already several evidence that not only there’s water on Mars but that in ancient times there were conditions similar to those on Earth, therefore favorable to the development of life forms.
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