by NASA’s Endurance Mars rover chief scientist is excited about material stored in the rover’s sample tubes, which fell on the surface of Mars and is inside the rover itself as it rotates inside Jezero Crater.
Given the samples of Mars that Persistence has collected so far, could one of those specimens be what the rover was sent to search for in the first place: evidence of past microbial life on the Red Planet ?
The preliminary result increases the need to return these Mars samples to Earth, so that these valuable collectibles from the Red Planet can be sent to laboratories for more rigorous analysis.
Related: If there is life on Mars, don’t rely on sample missions to find it, scientists say
A lively question
Caltech’s Kenneth Farley, project scientist for NASA’s Mars Endurance rover program, briefed the Extraterrestrial Matter Analysis Group (ExMAG) during a meeting held May 13-15 in Houston, Texas.
Tagged “Lefroy Bay,” Farley pointed to this sample collected by the Perseverance rover, which was found to contain hydrated silica. Here on Earth, that mineral has the highest ability to preserve signs of ancient life.
Thus arises a lively question that needs an answer: Perhaps there are preserved signs of ancient life on Mars at Lefroy Bay?
Paleological conditions
“The Lefroy Bay sample and two other samples from the same unit – the ‘Edge Unit’ – are on board Persistence,” Farley told Space.com. “The Margin Unit samples are abundant in carbonate and silica, clearly indicating a dominant role for liquid water in their formation,” he said.
But whether that water was surface water in a lake or river, or groundwater, remains uncertain, Farley said. An ancient Martian environment (more than 3.4 billion years old) may have been habitable, he said.
These samples host phases that are particularly useful on Earth for establishing “paleoenvironmental” conditions, Farley noted, and can also preserve biological signals. “So these samples are particularly important to return to Earth for further study,” Farley said.
Purpose: set in stone
Sustainability “is about to make a really fundamental shift in the exploration of the environment in which we work,” Farley explained in his ExMAG briefing. “One of the challenges we face,” he said, “is that this is not great terrain to drive a rover across.”
So far, the Mars rover has traversed about 17 miles (27 kilometers) after being lowered into the area by a sky tree on February 18, 2021. The robot’s purpose is set in stone: “Look for signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith to restore Earth,” explains NASA.
But why was the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater chosen as the exploration site for the rover?
Scientists believe that the area was once submerged and contained an ancient river delta. Jezero Crater is expected to be quite literally, “spilling” the beans about its nature over and over again on Mars’ wet weather. More than 3.5 billion years ago, a river channel spilled over the crater wall and created a lake.
It is possible that microbial life could have been living in Jezero during one or more of those wet periods. If true, evidence of remains from these tiny creatures could be found in lakeside or shoreline sediments.
Rover Challenges
Regarding the overall health of the Endurance rover, Farley noted a few issues: One, the loss of wind sensors that are part of the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), built by an international team led by Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología. “We’ve mostly lost the wind sensors. They’re basically not functioning anymore,” he reported.
Also, the spectroscopic parts of the Habitable Environments Robotic hand-held scanning with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, SHERLOC are challenged shortly. That’s because the lens hood is no longer working properly. However, some preliminary work has been done that suggests scientists may be able to recover SHERLOC’s spectroscopy capabilities. “We’ll know more about that in the coming months,” Farley said.
Three Forks Depot
The rover was sent to Mars with 38 tubes that could be used for rock, regolith, and even atmospheric sampling. “We’re about two-thirds of the way through the sample collection,” Farley explained.
The rover on duty has sampled igneous rocks, mudstone, sandstone/pebble conglomerate, carbonate-silica-olivine, as well as sand on the surface of Mars and has penetrated the Martian atmosphere.
Earlier in her walk on Mars, Perseverance dropped 10 sealed sample tubes at a depot site called “Three Forks” in Jezero Crater. The intention is that a future Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission would harvest sample tubes to rocket those bits and pieces of Mars back to Earth.
However, that joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency is now undergoing a detailed review due to a projected $11 billion price tag and an expected, but not satisfactory, time frame for completion. with such a complex effort.
Stay the course
Farley told the ExMAG group that rover operators are working to qualify endurance to 55 miles (90 kilometers) of crossing, allowing it to make its way to enliven the landscape.
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“Obviously there’s a huge amount of uncertainty about what the MSR will be. We’re waiting to hear how we’re going to play a role in the Endurance mission,” Farley said. “But for now, we’re going to stay the course. We’re going to continue to behave basically as we have so far, with a strong focus on sample collection.”
Now on the rover’s itinerary is completing tasks at an area called Bright Angel, then moving up to the rim of the crater, where the rover can survey fundamentally different geology, Farley said.
As we go up on the rim, “we’ll get the sampling done quickly. The sooner the sampling is done the sooner we can be easy … that we’ve done our job,” Farley said.
The first thing that will happen to Persistence is TBD status.
“Maybe we will return to the crater floor to rendezvous with MSR, maybe we won’t. It will depend on what actually happens with MSR,” Farley concluded.
Editor’s note: The original version of this story contained this sentence: “Reviewing the Mars samples collected by Persistence, scientists say one tube appears to be packed with what the rover was looking for: evidence of microbial life in time spent on the Red Planet.” However, that is too strong a statement; The story was edited at 7:15 pm ET on May 20 to replace the following with the following: “Given the samples of Mars collected by Persistence to date, could one of the specimens “That’s what the rover was sent to look for in the first place: evidence of past microbial life on the Red Planet?”
