If life ever existed on Mars, then newly discovered mineral deposits on the flanks of a long-dead volcano would be a good place to dig for its remains.
Spotted by a high-powered orbital imager, they’re not the first deposits found on Mars of silica, a mineral used by some simple forms of life, including single-celled algae that evolved early in Earth’s volcanic past.
But the new deposits are the first from a locale with a definite volcanic pedigree, formerly rich in heat and water, as well as minerals — a locale formerly suited, by any earthly definition, for life.
Stand on the slopes of Nili Patera 3.7 billion years ago, and “you would see steam rising up out of the volcano. In the spots we see the deposits, that’s where the highest concentration of steam would be,” said geoscientist Jack Mustard of Brown University. “It’d be like standing on Hawaii, looking across a volcano, seeing the fumaroles where vapors are given off, or standing in Iceland where the hills are steaming.”
Mustard’s findings, co-authored with fellow Brown geoscientist J.R. Skok, were published October 31 in Nature Geoscience. His laboratory is among those that in recent years has processed an extraordinary flow of red planet data, returned by Mars-orbiting spacecraft and surface-exploring robots.
This data has moved researchers beyond looking for signs of water — the latest of which was reported just last week, by both the Spirit and Phoenix rovers — to evaluating potentially once-habitable environments in precise detail.
 “It’s the most definitive hydrothermal system we’ve found on Mars. You can see the source of the heat, the driving of the fluids that left the deposits,” said Mustard. “In this deposit, you have the culprit right before you. In other deposits, they’re either sedimentary, or in the center of an impact crater. You have no idea how they happened.”
According to Mustard, traces of any organisms that existed could still be found in the silica, which is non-porous and ideal for preserving fossil remains from the ravages of time and weather. Even after 3.7 billion years, any degradation would come only from silica-penetrating cosmic rays, which break down biological compounds. Those would still leave telltale residues of carbon, and the ExoMars expedition robot, scheduled to launch in 2018, will be equipped with a six-foot-long drill perfect for digging beneath ray-damaged layers.
Mustard isn’t yet prepared to say the rover Curiosity, successor to the Phoenix and Spirit rovers, should visit Nili Patera when it lands on Mars in 2012. Curiosity lacks ExoMars’ planned drilling capacity, and already has a wealth of places to explore: the ancient lake deposits of Holden crater, a stack of sedimentary layers three miles thick in Gale crater, and the Mawrth Vallis river valley.
But Mustard couldn’t help but speculate. “It would be pretty intriguing” if Curiosity found carbon amidst the silica, he said. “Or the rover, as it’s going up the slopes, could dislodge some rocks and look underneath. That’s where the good stuff is.”
Images: The Nili Patera caldera./NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS, JHU-APL, Brown University.
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Citation: “Silica deposits in the Nili Patera caldera on the Syrtis Major volcanic complex on Mars.” By J. R. Skok, J. F. Mustard, B. L. Ehlmann, R. E. Milliken and S. L. Murchie. Nature Geoscience, advance online publication, October 31, 2010.
Brandon’s Twitter stream, reportorial outtakes and citizen-funded White Nose Syndrome story; Wired Science on Twitter.
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A new batch of sharp Martian close-ups from NASA's HiRISE camera were released on Sept. 1. HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has been circling Mars on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for four years now, taking dramatic photos of the red planet with a telephoto lens to make any paparazzi jealous. The camera can focus on objects the size of a beach ball from more than 180 miles away.
The 236 new images, taken between July 8 and July 31, cover the planet practically from pole to pole. They zoom in on terrain ranging from volcanic cones to cratered planes, from wind-swept dunes to crusts of ice. The images even capture evidence of ongoing geological processes on Mars today, like fresh craters that may have formed between January and June of this year.
These are some of our favorites from the new set. But since January, the HiRISE team has been letting the public point the camera. You can suggest new terrain to explore using their "HiWish" feature.
Above: These volcanic cones were formed by hot lava running over water or ice. The heat from the lava boiled the water underneath, and the water burst upwards in an exploding bubble of lava. The explosion threw chunks of molten and solid lava into the air to gather into the cones. These cones are similar in size and shape to cones found in Iceland.
Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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Scientists have a new explanation for what makes the Red Planet so red.
Recent experiments show that regular sand, when combined with black Martian basalt, takes on a reddish hue as it’s crushed into dust, whether or not water or oxygen is present. Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark claim that Mars’ red dust could have formed without the water that current hypotheses hold once covered the planet.
“Mars should really look blackish between its white polar caps, because most of the rocks at mid-latitudes are basalt,” said physicist Jonathan Merrison in a press release. “For decades we assumed that the reddish regions on Mars are related to the water-rich early history of the planet and that, at least in some areas, water-bearing, heavily oxidized iron minerals are present.”
But when Merrison and his team mixed sand with a mineral called magnetite, found in Martian basalt, they found that mechanical stimulation alone produced a fine red dust. To simulate sand transport on Mars, the scientists tumbled pure quartz in a hermetically sealed flask for seven months, flipping each flask 10 million times. By the end of the experiment, 10 percent of the sand had turned to dust, and it became redder and redder with the addition of magnetite.
“Subsequent analysis of the flask material and dust has shown that the magnetite was transformed into the red mineral hematite, through a completely mechanical process without the presence of water at any stage of this process,” said Merrison, who presented the work yesterday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Germany.
Although the scientists don’t understand how the black mineral converts into the red one, they think it’s due to a chemical reaction with the eroded sand. Because the experiment works not only in air, but also in a dry carbon dioxide atmosphere like the one on Mars, the researchers say simple grinding is a plausible explanation for how Mars got its striking color.
Image: Scientists say Mars should look black like the planet on the right, but may have turned red through a mechanical grinding process.
NASA/ESA/Hubble Team.
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Scientists have a new explanation for what makes the Red Planet so red.
Recent experiments show that regular sand, when combined with black Martian basalt, takes on a reddish hue as it’s crushed into dust, whether or not water or oxygen is present. Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark claim that Mars’ red dust could have formed without the water that current hypotheses hold once covered the planet.
“Mars should really look blackish between its white polar caps, because most of the rocks at mid-latitudes are basalt,” said physicist Jonathan Merrison in a press release. “For decades we assumed that the reddish regions on Mars are related to the water-rich early history of the planet and that, at least in some areas, water-bearing, heavily oxidized iron minerals are present.”
But when Merrison and his team mixed sand with a mineral called magnetite, found in Martian basalt, they found that mechanical stimulation alone produced a fine red dust. To simulate sand transport on Mars, the scientists tumbled pure quartz in a hermetically sealed flask for seven months, flipping each flask 10 million times. By the end of the experiment, 10 percent of the sand had turned to dust, and it became redder and redder with the addition of magnetite.
“Subsequent analysis of the flask material and dust has shown that the magnetite was transformed into the red mineral hematite, through a completely mechanical process without the presence of water at any stage of this process,” said Merrison, who presented the work yesterday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Germany.
Although the scientists don’t understand how the black mineral converts into the red one, they think it’s due to a chemical reaction with the eroded sand. Because the experiment works not only in air, but also in a dry carbon dioxide atmosphere like the one on Mars, the researchers say simple grinding is a plausible explanation for how Mars got its striking color.
Image: Scientists say Mars should look black like the planet on the right, but may have turned red through a mechanical grinding process.
NASA/ESA/Hubble Team.
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Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.
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Russian engineers broke a red wax seal and six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars. Sergei Ryazansky, the captain of the six-man crew, told reporters at a Moscow research institute near the Kremlin on Tuesday that the most difficult thing was knowing that instead of making the 172-million mile journey, they were locked in a windowless module of metal canisters the size of railway cars. Read more:
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Russian engineers broke a red wax seal and six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars. Sergei Ryazansky, the captain of the six-man crew, told reporters at a Moscow research institute near the Kremlin on Tuesday that the most difficult thing was knowing that instead of making the 172-million mile journey, they were locked in a windowless module of metal canisters the size of railway cars. Read more:
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 New
ion engine could reach Mars in 39 days. Last week, as the world
celebrated the first lunar landing, Apollo 11
astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins both called for NASA to make Mars its next goal.
But the chemical propulsion system that took them to the moon would
take six months, at least, to get a man to Mars and cost hundreds of
billions of dollars. However, a new ion plasma rocket being developed
by another former astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, could potentially
reach Mars in just 39 days using a fraction of the fuel.
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 Building on the success of the two rover geologists that arrived at Mars in January, 2004, NASA's next rover mission is being planned for travel to Mars before the end of the decade. Twice as long and three times as heavy as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory will collect Martian soil and rock samples and analyze them for organic compounds and environmental conditions that could have supported microbial life now or in the past. The mission is anticipated to have a truly international flavor, with a neutron-based hydrogen detector for locating water provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency, a meteorological package provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, and a spectrometer provided by the Canadian Space Agency...
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Section: Astronomy -
File Under: Mars |
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Building on the success of the two rover geologists that arrived at Mars in January, 2004, NASA's next rover mission is being planned for travel to Mars before the end of the decade. Twice as long and three times as heavy as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory will collect Martian soil and rock samples and analyze them for organic compounds and environmental conditions that could have supported microbial life now or in the past. The mission is anticipated to have a truly international flavor, with a neutron-based hydrogen detector for locating water provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency, a meteorological package provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, and a spectrometer provided by the Canadian Space Agency...
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Section: Astronomy -
File Under: Mars |
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