“The Mastcam”

We have received precious data lately from the Curiosity rover that involve a lot of visual information. One of the latest installments from the rover involves a picture of earth from the Martian surface. This brings up some questions about the camera behind such high quality pictures: the Mast Camera aka Mastcam.

It is a system based on prior Mars Exploration rovers such as the ones that landed in Mars around 2004. The current piece consists of two camera systems mounted on a mast extending upwards from the Curiosity’s body. Some of the new capabilities of the Mastcam that distinguish it from the previous rovers are: can take high definition videos at 10 frames per second; it has an internal data buffer that can manage to store thousands of images or several hours of high definition video footage for transmission to Earth; it also processes the images independently of the rover’s central processing unit, etc.

Further, the two lenses of this camera are designed with different purposes, for example, one of the two cameras has a moderate-resolution lens while the other has a high-resolution lens to study everything that is far from the rover.

The Mastcam is being used to study the Martian landscape, rocks, and soils; to view frost and weather phenomena; and to support the driving and sampling operations of the rover, etc.

By: Curiosity Rover Blog CHEM 1045 Engineering Team - Aldo García, Andrés Villalobos, Resni Cruz, and Ahmed Pla

Water on Mars!

The image above is of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite before it was installed in the Curiosity rover. This instrument analyzed soil samples on Mars and discovered water traces.

NASA's Curiosity rover has done it again; Curiosity has found some more interesting samples on our beautiful Red Planet, water! Water has never seemed so exciting and it only gets better, Curiosity's SAM discovered that about two percent of Mars's surface is made up of water. Aside from discovering water, Curiosity analyzed a small sample of soil from a sandy area, known as Rocknest, and heated the sample to over 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The sample proved to contain chlorine, oxygen and carbonated materials which form in the presence of water. So what does this all mean? Well, Curiosity found several elements that are essential to life and now water. Mars could have once supported life, all we need if evidence from Curiosity.

“Methane and a sign of Life in the Red Planet”

This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA's Curiosity rover

Currently, NASA’s Curiosity rover has uncovered the fact that the Martian environment is lacking methane, even though previous research indicated positive detections. After extensive experiments in the Martian environment this gas has not been found, which as of now is of great interest for the scientists because of its relation to the idea of potential signs of life. According to Michael Meyer, NASA’s lead scientist for Mars exploration, “this important result will help direct our efforts to examine the possibility of life on Mars”. From October of 2012 through June of this year, the Curiosity analyzed the atmosphere six times. Given the fact that no gas has been detected, scientists estimate that there is no more 1.3 part per billion of methane within the atmosphere. Previous reports showed concentrations up to 45 parts per billion, which was what originally sparked the idea of a biological source on Mars, on the other hand, current experiments have shown otherwise. The University of Michigan, released an article where one the authors affirms that according with these methane measurements, “there is no mechanism, whether it be biological, geological or simply the degradation of organic material from meteorites” to support huge amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Still, the Curiosity rover remains studying the Red Planet, in hopes of finding some ground breaking evidence leading to the assertion of a habitable environment.

By: Adrian Gonzalez, Maribel Alberto, and Mileidy Gonzalez

What Happened to Mars's Atmosphere?

According to NASA's Curiosity rover data, Mars has an atmosphere that is only a fraction of the size that it could have once been. As of today, Mars's thin atmosphere is known to be enriched with heavy carbon and oxygen isotopes, measured by the rover's SAM suite, Sample Analysis at Mars, in several samples of the Martian atmosphere. How did Mars's atmosphere decrease in size? The exact answer is unknown but there is concrete evidence that said atmosphere was once much thicker: water. Because the Martian atmosphere is currently too thin, liquid water can't be present on the Red Planet. However, there is evidence that there once was liquid water on our neighboring planet and thus gives us the certainty that at one given moment the atmosphere was much thicker. Meteorites were also analyzed and indicated that the loss of Mar's atmosphere could have began around the first billion years of the planet's 4.6 billion year existence. Although the Curiosity rover can't measure the exact loss of atmospheric presence, a future mission to Mars will be able to do so. The MAVEN, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, will bring data to understand the changes Mars's has undergone through the centuries and perhaps allow us to know our neighboring planet a little better.

Neighbors on Mars

The samples examined by Curiosity above are from different parts of Mars, the left “Wopmay” from Endurance Crater and the right “sheepbay” from Gale Crater.

Perhaps the thought of a human once living on Mars could be an idea that is too far-fetched, but could nothing have ever thrived in our neighboring planet? The Curiosity rover sent to Mars has clearly proven that, at one point in time, we might have had extraterrestrial neighbors, although these may have only been microbes. Curiosity collected a rock sample in Gale Crater and scientists were able to identify some of the key chemical ingredients for life: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Moreover, Curiosity has also been able to discover the end of ancient river system in the Yellowknife Bay area it was exploring and, in Gale Crater, fine-grained mud-stone proves multiple periods of wet conditions, nodules and veins. Now we have more reason to believe we might have never been alone in the universe, the challenge that lies ahead for Curiosity is to prove that we still aren't alone.