Next Mars Mission Will Have to Deal with Contamination

November 20th, 2008

This fall the next Mars mission is designed to find out more conclusively whether or not it could support life. The Mars Science Laboratory instrument package will be able to study the martian environment with more accuracy than previous missions, but it will have some obstacles to overcome. Some of the most sensitive instruments will be able to study organic matter almost as tiny as a single human cell. Since the matter is so small trying to keep it from contamination in the process is going to be one of the biggest challenges.

“Viking paid a great deal of attention to contamination,” says Paul Mahaffy, an MSL scientist who specializes in planetary atmospheres at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “What went to Mars was very free of viable microbial matter. Even though MSL is not designed as a life detection experiment, any type of microbes, either dead or alive, could confuse the types of signals we are looking for. So we need to be as clean as possible.”

Just like on Earth, scientists are trying to find signs of life in the soil of the martian planet. Previous missions have not found any evidence whatsoever of life’s building blocks, but scientists are optimistic. They believe that at the very least Mars should show signs of these building blocks simply from it landing there from outside such as by comets or asteroids or through chemical processes tied to volcanic activity in a freezing climate.

“One thing we want to do with the Mars Science Lab is understand the chemical environment for survival and the preservation of organic molecules, and whether they survive at the surface,” says Mahaffy. “A prime objective of the mission is to really understand whether organics can survive in the present chemical environment of Mars, which we really don’t know enough about to be able to predict.”

More in depth coverage on how they plan to reduce contamination can be read here.

Scientists have also discovered buried glaciers on Mars recently that are water based, and not on the poles. This is the first time they have found frozen water at such a low latitude on the planet.

“Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that’s not in the polar caps,” said John Holt of the University of Texas at Austin and the main author of the study. “Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to one-half-mile thick, and there are many more.”

Scientists are debating how the glaciers formed, as well as how old they are between fat burners sessions. Some believed that they were mostly rock, but this recent study suggests that they are more glacier than rock. they also estimate that the glaciers could have formed up to 100 million years ago during when Mars’ orbital tilt was much different than it is now (the axis the planet spins on has considerable “wobble,” meaning its angle changes over time) and the planet was much colder, allowing ice to form on the surface.