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Martian Soil Sample Reveals No Organic Compounds

December 03, 2012

by VOA News

Despite speculation that NASA was set to announce big findings from the Curiosity rover’s first analysis of Martian soil, the agency revealed Monday that an initial analysis found no organic material.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Organic compounds are widely considered to be the building blocks of life, and would be evidence that Mars could have at one point hosted life.

The soil analysis did find substances containing water, and in higher quantities than anticipated, but NASA cautioned that the water detected does not mean the area was wet, adding that water bound to grains of sand or dust is not uncommon.

Curiosity used a robotic arm to scoop the soil from a windblown area called Rocknest, and tested it inside its laboratory. The lab includes the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite, which analyzes gases given off from the dusty sand when it is heated in a tiny oven, and a Chemical and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument.

According to the initial analysis, the soil composition is about half volcanic minerals and half non-crystalline materials such as glass. Also discovered was the compound perchlorate, which is made up of oxygen and chlorine and had been previously found in Martian soil by NASA’s Phoenix lander.

"We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "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."

Curiosity is the centerpiece of the two-year Mars Science Laboratory mission, tasked with determining whether the planet ever supported life. NASA says it will use mineral analysis of Martian soil to reveal past environmental conditions and chemical analysis to check for the ingredients necessary for life.

The nuclear powered, one-ton rover will hunt for evidence of microbes on Mars and harvest a host of data and images from the planet. It is equipped with 17 cameras, a robotic arm, a laser and a drill.

The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars in August to begin its two-year, $2.5 billion mission, and is the seventh NASA spacecraft to land on the Red Planet.