NASA’s Curiosity Rover has detected methane in Gale Crater on Mars, a surprising find as there are no signs of life on the planet. Scientists are exploring geological sources and seasonal patterns for these emissions, with methane levels showing unusual fluctuations and disappearing during the day. Credit: SciTechDaily.comLiving creatures produce most of the methane on Earth.
Pavlov and his colleagues tested whether bacteria known as halophiles, which live in saltwater lakes and other salt-rich environments on Earth, could thrive in similar conditions on Mars. Curiosity set out to answer the question: Did Mars ever have the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes? Early in its mission, Curiosity’s scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars. It continues to explore the rock record from a time when Mars could have been home to microbial life. Credit: NASA
That’s a much higher salt concentration than Curiosity has measured in Gale Crater. But regolith there is rich in a different type of salt minerals called sulfates, which Pavlov’s team wants to test next to see if they can also form seals.2022 NASA Planetary Mission Senior Review “Methane experiments are resource intensive, so we have to be very strategic when we decide to do them,” said Goddard’s Charles Malespin, principal investigator for SAM.