This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera
(Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a series of
sedimentary deposits in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater, from a perspective in
Yellowknife Bay looking toward west-northwest.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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This illustration depicts a concept for the
possible extent of an ancient lake inside Gale Crater.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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This mosaic of images from Curiosity's Mast Camera
(Mastcam) shows geological members of the Yellowknife Bay formation, and the
sites where Curiosity drilled into the lowest-lying member, called Sheepbed, at
targets "John Klein" and "Cumberland."
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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NASA's Curiosity rover is providing vital insight about Mars' past and
current environments that will aid plans for future robotic and human
missions.
In a little more than a year on the Red Planet, the mobile Mars Science
Laboratory has determined the age of a Martian rock, found evidence the planet
could have sustained microbial life, taken the first readings of radiation on
the surface, and shown how natural erosion could reveal the building blocks of
life. Curiosity team members presented these results and more from Curiosity in
six papers published online today by Science Express and in talks at the Fall
Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The Age of 'Cumberland'
The second rock Curiosity drilled for a sample on Mars, which scientists
nicknamed "Cumberland," is the first ever to be dated from an analysis of its
mineral ingredients while it sits on another planet. A report by Kenneth Farley
of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and co-authors, estimates
the age of Cumberland at 3.86 billion to 4.56 billion years old. This is in the
range of earlier estimates for rocks in Gale Crater, where Curiosity is
working.
"The age is not surprising, but what is surprising is that this method worked
using measurements performed on Mars," said Farley. "When you're confirming a
new methodology, you don't want the first result to be something unexpected. Our
understanding of the antiquity of the Martian surface seems to be right."
The analysis of Cumberland from a sample drilled by Curiosity was a
fundamental and unprecedented measurement considered unlikely when the rover
landed in 2012. Farley and his co-authors adapted a 60-year-old radiometric
method for dating Earth rocks that measures the decay of an isotope of potassium
as it slowly changes into argon, an inert gas. Argon escapes when a rock is
melted. This dating method measures the amount of argon that accumulates when
the rock hardens again.
Before they could measure rocks directly on Mars, scientists estimated their
ages by counting and comparing the numbers of impact craters on various areas of
the planet. The crater densities are correlated with ages based on comparisons
with crater densities on the moon, which were tied to absolute dates after the
Apollo lunar missions returned rocks to Earth.
Farley and co-authors also assessed how long Cumberland has been within about
an arm's reach of the Martian surface, where cosmic rays that hit atoms in the
rock produce gas buildups that Curiosity can measure.
Analyses of three different gases yielded exposure ages in the range of 60
million to 100 million years. This suggests shielding layers above the rock were
stripped away relatively recently. Combined with clues of wind erosion Curiosity
observed, the exposure-age discovery points to a pattern of windblown sand
chewing away at relatively thick layers of rock. The eroding layer forms a
retreating vertical face, or scarp.
"The exposure rate is surprisingly fast," Farley said. "The place where
you'll find the rocks with the youngest exposure age will be right next to the
downwind scarps."
From Rocks to Building Blocks?
Finding rocks with the youngest exposure age is important in the mission's
investigations of whether organic chemicals are preserved from ancient
environments. Organic chemicals are building blocks for life, although they also
can be produced without any biology.
"We're making progress on the path to determining whether there are Martian
organics in there," Doug Ming, of NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, said of
the Cumberland rock sample. "We detect organics but can't rule out that they
might be brought along from Earth." Curiosity detected higher amounts in
Cumberland than it did in in either test runs with Martian soil samples or
analysis of empty sample cups. Increasing the amount of rock powder in the test
cup increased the amount of organic content detected.
Favorable for Life
Ming is the lead author of a new report about a site called "Yellowknife
Bay." The team reported 10 months ago that the first rock Curiosity drilled
there, nicknamed "John Klein," yielded evidence that met the mission's goal of
identifying a Martian environment favorable for microbial life long ago.
Yellowknife Bay's clay-rich lakebed habitat offers the key chemical elements for
life, plus water not too acidic or salty, and an energy source. The energy
source is a type used by many rock-eating microbes on Earth: a mix of sulfur-
and iron-containing minerals that are ready acceptors of electrons, and others
that are ready electron donors, like the two poles of a battery.
Not only has Curiosity accomplished its primary goal of finding evidence for
an ancient environment that could have supported life, but it also has provided
evidence habitable conditions existed more recently than expected and likely
persisted for millions of years.
Additional new results from Curiosity are providing the first readings of
radiation hazards at Mars' surface, which will aid planning of human missions to
Mars. Other findings will guide the search for evidence of life on Mars by
improving insight about how erosion may expose buried clues of molecular
building blocks of life.
New estimates of when habitable conditions existed at Yellowknife Bay and how
long they persisted come from details of rocks' composition and layering. It is
thought that Mars had enough fresh water to generate clay minerals -- and
possibly support life -- more than 4 billion years ago, but that the planet
underwent drying that left any remaining liquid water acidic and briny. A key
question was whether the clay minerals at Yellowknife Bay formed earlier,
upstream on the rim of Gale Crater where the bits of rock originated, or later,
downstream where the rock particles were carried by water and deposited.
Scott McLennan of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., and co-authors
found that chemical elements in the rocks indicate the particles were carried
from their upstream source area to Yellowknife Bay and that most chemical
weathering occurred after they were deposited. The loss of elements that leach
easily, such as calcium and sodium, would be noticeable if the weathering that
turns some volcanic minerals into clay minerals had happened upstream.
Scientists did not notice such leaching.
David Vaniman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and
co-authors found supporting evidence in a separate mineral analysis of
sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay. They noticed a lack of olivine and an
abundance of magnetite, which suggests the rocks turned to clay after they
washed downstream. The presence of smectite tells about conditions where the
clay formed.
"Smectite is the typical clay mineral in lake deposits," Vaniman said. "It is
commonly called a swelling clay -- the kind that sticks to your boot when you
step in it. You find biologically rich environments where you find smectites on
Earth."
John Grotzinger of Caltech and co-authors examined physical characteristics
of rock layers in and near Yellowknife Bay and concluded the habitable
environment there existed at a time "relatively young by Martian standards." It
was a part of Martian history called the Hesperian Era, when parts of the planet
were already becoming drier and more acidic, less than 4 billion years ago and
roughly the same time as the oldest evidence for life on Earth.
"This habitable environment existed later than many people thought there
would be one," Grotzinger said. "This has global implications. It's from a time
when there were deltas, alluvial fans and other signs of surface water at many
places on Mars, but those were considered too young, or too short-lived, to have
formed clay minerals. The thinking was, if they had clay minerals, those must
have washed in from older deposits. Now, we know the clay minerals could be
produced later, and that gives us many locations that may have had habitable
environments, too."
Research suggests habitable conditions in the Yellowknife Bay area may have
persisted for millions to tens of millions of years. During that time rivers and
lakes probably appeared and disappeared. Even when the surface was dry, the
subsurface likely was wet, as indicated by mineral veins deposited by
underground water into fractures in the rock. The thickness of observed and
inferred tiers of rock layers provides the basis for estimating long duration,
and the discovery of a mineral energy source for underground microbes favors
habitability throughout.
Implications for Human Explorers
Today's reports include the first measurements of the natural radiation
environment on the surface of Mars. Cosmic rays from outside our solar system
and energetic particles from the sun bombarded the surface at Gale Crater with
an average of 0.67 millisieverts per day from August 2012 to June 2013,
according to a report by Don Hassler of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder,
Colo., and co-authors. For comparison, radiation exposure from a typical chest
X-ray is about 0.02 millisievert. That 10-month measurement period did not
include any major solar storms affecting Mars, and more than 95 percent of the
total came from cosmic rays.
Results from the surface-radiation monitoring provide an additional piece of
the puzzle for projecting the total round-trip radiation dose for a future human
mission to Mars. Added to dose rates Curiosity measured during its flight to
Mars, the Mars surface results project a total round-trip dose rate for a future
human mission at the same period in the solar cycle to be on the order of 1,000
millisieverts.
Long-term population studies have shown exposure to radiation increases a
person’s lifetime cancer risk. Exposure to a dose of 1,000 millisieverts is
associated with a 5 percent increase in risk for developing fatal cancer. NASA's
current career limit for increased risk for its astronauts currently operating
in low-Earth orbit is 3 percent. The agency is working with the Institute of
Medicine of the National Academies to address the ethics, principles and
guidelines for health standards for long duration and exploration spaceflight
missions.
The radiation detected by Curiosity is consistent with earlier predictions.
The new data will help NASA scientists and engineers create better models to
anticipate the radiation environment human explorers will face, as the agency
develops new technologies to protect astronauts in deep space.
"Our measurements provide crucial information for human missions to Mars,"
Hassler said. "We're continuing to monitor the radiation environment and seeing
the effects of major solar storms on the surface at different times in the solar
cycle, will give additional important data. Our measurements also tie into
Curiosity's investigations about habitability. The radiation sources that are
concerns for human health also affect microbial survival as well as preservation
of organic chemicals."
If any organic chemicals that are potential signs of life did exist within
rocks at about 2 inches (5 centimeters), the depth of Curiosity's drill, Hassler
estimated they would be depleted up to 1,000-fold in about 650 million years by
radiation at the exposure rate measured in Curiosity's first 10 months. However,
the Cumberland rock that Curiosity sampled with its drill at Yellowknife Bay had
been exposed to cosmic rays' effects for only about 60 million to 100 million
years, by Farley's estimate. Researchers calculate that, with such a young
exposure age, enough organic material could still be present in Cumberland to be
detectable. Even if Mars has never supported life, the planet receives organic
molecules delivered by meteorites, which should leave a detectable trace.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory built Curiosity and manages the mission for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
For more information about the mission,
visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
2013-356
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