Could we find alien life in 20 Years?

 

"I think in the next 20 years we will find out we are not alone in the universe.”

Kevin Hand, Deputy Chief Scientist,

Solar System Exploration,

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 Mr. Hand is not the first scientist to make predictions of that kind. Further, Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, has said we will discover a signal from intelligent life in eleven years.

On Mars, the Curiosity rover is making new discoveries and scientists are optimistic about finding life on Mars in a few years. "There is one thing we can say for sure: If we don’t look for life out there, we won’t find it. It’s more a matter of will than scientific know-how. According to NASA scientists the$8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope is a good start. Slated to launch into orbit by 2018, it could detect signs of oxygen, methane or other signs of biological life on distant planets, although some scientists think that an even larger, more advanced telescope is needed to accomplish that goal.

NASA’s Curiosity rover is trying to find that the Red Planet was once and still is home to life. But not all scientists are willing to name a specific number of years until we find traces of aliens — or if we will ever find them at all.

There are theories as to how common life is in the universe. But until they actually observe signs of life, they can’t be sure. If we do find something in the next 20 years, however, it could mean that we have a lot of alien neighbors and we didn't even know. We should be putting more resources into exploring space for signs of life in order to know more about the strange things that surrounds us. Finding life anywhere could mean "we live in a biological universe where life arises whenever the conditions are right,” the possibility of such a revolutionary discovery is worth funding advanced telescopes and missions to Mars, Jupiter’s Europa moon and beyond. "There is one thing we can say for sure: If we don’t look for life out there, we won’t find it.”

By: Chm1046 Honors Project; Biology Group - Adriana Blanco, Aldo Garcia, Daniela Ramirez

Flat Tire?

Unexpected wheel damage on the Curiosity Rover

During engineering conferences conducted by NASA it has been stated that each of Curiosity's six aluminum wheels is independently actuated and geared, built for climbing in soft sand and rolling over rocks. However, engineers eyeing rover-snapped imagery have been taken aback by the amount of wear and tear on the wheels. It is said to be NASA’s surprise of the year. 

The Curiosity Rover Engineering team always expected to get some holes in the wheels as they drove, it's just the magnitude of what they are seeing which surprise them. According to Jim Erickson, Curiosity Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, they are trying to avoid a particular kind of rock that is causing the damage.

Overall, they're learning how to get to the right paths that are going to minimize, not eliminate, the damage on the wheels. It is said that they have never encountered that kind of hard, embedded rock on Mars before. Based on these findings modifications on the design of NASA's next Mars rover, scheduled to launch in 2020 might be modified

By: Chm1046 Honors Project; Engineering Team: Rene Esusy, Mirtha Echeverria and Resni Cruz

History being made on the Red Planet

Curiosity Rover “Selfie”

Mars Science Laboratory Rover team have pointed out that it is very hard to find organic molecules on the Martian surface because the high levels of radiation of Galactic cosmic rays and solar eruptions have deteriorated all the carbon-based chemistry we know of on Mars.

However, they have found a method to find specific places for the rover to drill to look for organics. By measuring the surface’s radioactive decay, the team has discovered the ages of specific surfaces such as the Yellowknife Bay, which has been exposed for about 80 million years.

The method mainly consists on finding potential cliffs or spots where there has been less chemistry-damaging radiation exposure.

By: Chem1046 Honors Project; Chemistry Group: Dahianna Ladino and Julia Cardenas

New Guys Next Door?

Ice on a Martian Crater

Meteors that have blasted off Mars have shown indications of what the early Martian atmosphere was like. They provide evidence that Mars was wet enough for life to exist. There have been 69 meteors found in our Solar System that originated from Mars. These meteorites show the presence of sulfur on the Martians surface. This discovery provides evidence that Mars once has been warm enough to allow water to exist in the surface by the effect of sulfur dioxide.

In contrast to Mars, on Earth it produces the opposite effect: it has a net cooling effect. This discovery shows how different these two planets are, but also the capacity of both planets to sustain living creatures. These asteroids bring insight to the evolution of Mars, and the possibility of having extraterrestrial neighbors.

By: Curiosity Rover Blog; Chm1046 Honors Project: Chemistry Group: Denisse Ziani and Stephanie Galdeano

“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.