[meteorite-list] New NASA Missions to Investigate How Mars Turned Hostile (MSL, MAVEN)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:15:52 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201111210215.pAL2Fq3k021303_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/hostile_mars.html

New NASA Missions to Investigate How Mars Turned Hostile
Bill Steigerwald
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
November 18, 2011
 
Maybe because it appears as a speck of blood in the sky, the planet Mars was
named after the Roman god of war. From the point of view of life as we know it,
that's appropriate. The Martian surface is incredibly hostile for life.
The Red Planet's thin atmosphere does little to shield the ground
against radiation from the Sun and space. Harsh chemicals, like hydrogen
peroxide, permeate the soil. Liquid water, a necessity for life, can't
exist for very long here - any that does not quickly evaporate in the
diffuse air will soon freeze out in subzero temperatures common over
much of the planet.

It wasn't always this way. There are signs that in the distant past,
billions of years ago, Mars was a much more inviting place. Martian
terrain is carved with channels that resemble dry riverbeds. Spacecraft
sent to orbit Mars have identified patches of minerals that form only in
the presence of liquid water. It appears that in its youth, Mars was a
place that could have harbored life, with a thicker atmosphere warm
enough for rain that formed lakes or even seas.

Two new NASA missions, one that will roam the surface and another that
will orbit the planet and dip briefly into its upper atmosphere, will
try to discover what transformed Mars. "The ultimate driver for these
missions is the question, did Mars ever have life?" says Paul Mahaffy of
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Did microbial life
ever originate on Mars, and what happened to it as the planet changed?
Did it just go extinct, or did it go underground, where it would be
protected from space radiation and temperatures might be warm enough for
liquid water?"

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission features Curiosity, the
largest and most advanced rover ever sent to the Red Planet. The
Curiosity rover bristles with multiple cameras and instruments,
including Goddard's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. By
looking for evidence of water, carbon, and other important building
blocks of life in the Martian soil and atmosphere, SAM will help
discover whether Mars ever had the potential to support life. Scheduled
to launch in late November or December 2011, Curiosity will be delivered
to Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide crater that contains a record of
environmental changes in its sedimentary rock, in August 2012.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, scheduled to
launch in late 2013, will orbit Mars and is devoted to understanding the
Red Planet's upper atmosphere. It will help determine what caused the
Martian atmosphere - and water - to be lost to space, making the climate
increasingly inhospitable for life.

"Both MAVEN and Curiosity/SAM will determine the history of the Martian
climate and atmosphere using multiple approaches," said MAVEN Principal
Investigator Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado's Laboratory
for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "Measurements of isotope ratios are
an approach shared by both missions."

Isotopes are heavier versions of an element. For example, deuterium is a
heavy version of hydrogen. Normally, two atoms of hydrogen join to an
oxygen atom to make a water molecule, but sometimes the heavy (and rare)
deuterium takes a hydrogen atom's place.

When water gets lofted into Mars' upper atmosphere, solar radiation can
break it apart into hydrogen (or deuterium) and oxygen. Hydrogen escapes
faster because it is lighter than deuterium. Since the lighter version
escapes more often, over time, the Martian atmosphere has less and less
hydrogen compared to the amount of deuterium remaining. The Martian
atmosphere therefore becomes richer and richer in deuterium.

The MAVEN team will measure the amount of deuterium compared to the
amount of hydrogen in Mars' upper atmosphere, which is the planet's
present-day deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) ratio. They will compare it to
the ratio Mars had when it was young - the early D/H ratio. (The early
ratio can be measured from the D/H ratio in ancient Martian minerals and
estimated from observations of the D/H ratio in comets and asteroids,
which are believed to be pristine, "fossil" remnants of our solar
system's formation.)

Comparing the present and early D/H ratios will allow the team to
calculate how much hydrogen (and, therefore, water) has been lost over
Mars' lifetime. MAVEN will also determine how much Martian atmosphere
has been lost over time by measuring the isotope ratios of other
elements in the very high atmosphere, such as nitrogen, oxygen, carbon,
and noble gases like argon.

MAVEN is expected to reach Mars in 2014. By then, SAM on board the
Curiosity rover will have made similar measurements from Gale crater,
which will help guide the interpretation of MAVEN's upper atmosphere
measurements.

Measuring isotopes in the atmosphere will reveal its present state. To
find out what the Martian atmosphere was like in the past, scientists
will use what they discover with MAVEN about the various ways the
atmosphere is being removed. With that data, they will build computer
simulations, or models, to estimate the condition of the Red Planet's
atmosphere billions of years ago.

Scientists estimate Gale crater may have formed more than three billion
years ago. Curiosity will grind up Gale crater minerals and deliver them
to SAM so the isotope ratios can be measured, giving a glimpse at the
Martian atmosphere from long ago, perhaps when it could have supported
life. "SAM's inputs from the surface of past Martian history will help
the MAVEN team work backwards to discover how the Martian atmosphere
evolved," said Joseph Grebowsky of NASA Goddard, MAVEN Project Scientist.

"For example, MAVEN will focus primarily on how solar activity erodes
the Martian atmosphere," adds Mahaffy. Things like the solar wind, a
tenuous stream of electrically conducting gas blown from the surface of
the Sun, and explosions in the Sun's atmosphere called solar flares, and
eruptions of solar material called coronal mass ejections can all strip
away the upper atmosphere of Mars in various ways. "If we figure out how
much atmosphere is removed by changes in solar activity, we can
extrapolate back to estimate what the isotope ratios should have been
billions of years ago. However, if the measurements of the ancient
ratios from SAM don't match up, this suggests that we may have to look
at other ways the atmosphere could have been lost, such as giant impacts
from asteroids," says Mahaffy, who is Principal Investigator for SAM and
Instrument Lead for the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer instrument
on MAVEN. Some scientists believe giant impacts could have blasted
significant amounts of the Martian atmosphere into space.

Also, Curiosity will carry a weather station, which will help the MAVEN
team understand how changes in the upper atmosphere are related to
changes at the surface. "For example, if the rover detects a dust storm,
it may have an effect higher up because of the winds and the gravity
waves (the bobbing up and down of a parcel of air) it sets up," says
Grebowsky.

"Curiosity will focus on geology and minerals to determine if the
environment on Mars in the distant past had the potential to support
life," said Mahaffy. "It will be digging in the dirt trying to
understand the habitability issue in a place where water may have
flowed, where there could have been a lake. Habitability is also the
basic theme of MAVEN - it will be trying to understand from the top down
how the atmosphere evolved over time and how it was lost, which ties
back to how clement it was early on."

MAVEN is part of NASA's Mars Scout program, funded by NASA Headquarters,
Washington, D.C. The project is led out of the University of Colorado
and managed by NASA Goddard. The Mars Science Laboratory is managed for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C., by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.
 
 
Received on Sun 20 Nov 2011 09:15:52 PM PST