Tags

NASA announced on Monday that in its first soil analysis of the Martian surface, though the Curiosity rover found interesting materials present, it did not yet find conclusive evidence of organic compounds.

The soil sample is the first of what is expected to be many during its two-year mission. The soil examined in the analysis was composed primarily of dust and sand drift and was chosen primarily for its small size and rough texture to clean out the sample chambers of any possible residual organic compound contamination from Earth.

SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy remarked, “We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater.”

SAM stands for Sample Analysis at Mars, a laboratory which contains an instrument that tests specifically for the presence of organic compounds by heating samples and analyzing the gases which are produced.

SAM also found a higher than expected amount of water in the soil.

SAM did find perchlorate which formed chlorinated methane during the testing process, but it is unclear whether the carbon within the reaction was of from Mars or if it traveled on the spacecraft from Earth. More soil testing will be required to produce a definitive result.

Meanwhile another laboratory on Curiosity, the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument determined that about half the sample was composed of volcanic minerals, while the half was non-crystalline in nature.

The laboratory on Curiosity was used at full ability, according to California Institute of Technology Professor of Geology John Grotzinger, who is a project scientist for the mission.

Grotzinger said, “We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift. The synergies of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the mission’s main science destination on Mount Sharp.”

Mount Sharp, which is miles from Curiosity’s recent location at the ‘Rocknest’ site in the Gale Crater, is the final planned destination of the rover during it primary mission.

The Curiosity rover launched in Nov. of 2011 and landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012. Curiosity’s mission is to analyze whether or not Mars has ever had an environment capable of supporting life.