{"id":15408,"date":"2016-06-27T18:20:33","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T10:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/oxygen-finding-strengthens-case-that-mars-was-once-habitable\/"},"modified":"2016-06-27T18:20:33","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T10:20:33","slug":"oxygen-finding-strengthens-case-that-mars-was-once-habitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/oxygen-finding-strengthens-case-that-mars-was-once-habitable\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxygen finding strengthens case that Mars was once habitable"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This
This scene shows NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover at a location called \u201cWindjana,\u201d where the rover found rocks containing manganese-oxide minerals, which require abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

High concentrations of manganese oxides found in Martian rocks by NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover indicate the red planet\u2019s atmosphere once had much more oxygen than than previously thought, scientists said Monday.<\/p>\n

Geologists scrutinizing data from Curiosity\u2019s ChemCam instrument, which takes remote measurements of rocks with a laser, discovered the manganese oxides in mineral veins, or cracks, embedded in sandstones at a research site named \u201cWindjana\u201d the rover visited in 2014.<\/p>\n

Windjana is one of many geological sites studied by Curiosity since its landing in Gale Crater in August 2012.<\/p>\n

Researchers already believed the vein-like features come from minerals left behind by water, and the presence of manganese oxides \u2014 chemicals that must have formed in an oxygen-rich atmosphere \u2014 seemingly ties the ancient wet environment to a time billions of years ago when more oxygen was in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only ways on Earth that we know how to make these manganese materials involve atmospheric oxygen or microbes,\u201d said Nina Lanza, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which led development of Curiosity\u2019s ChemCam instrument. \u201cNow we\u2019re seeing manganese oxides on Mars, and we\u2019re wondering how the heck these could have formed?\u201d<\/p>\n

The atmospheric oxygen explanation for the manganese oxides is more plausible than a biological origin, scientists said in an announcement Monday accompanying the finding\u2019s publication in the journal Geophysical Research Papers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese high manganese materials can\u2019t form without lots of liquid water and strongly oxidizing conditions,\u201d Lanza said in a statement issued by the the Los Alamos National Laboratory. \u201cHere on Earth, we had lots of water but no widespread deposits of manganese oxides until after the oxygen levels in our atmosphere rose due to photosynthesizing microbes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists are still struggling to explain how the atmosphere of ancient Mars may have been enriched with oxygen, but one theory is it came from the water on the planet\u2019s surface, NASA said in a press release.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne potential way that oxygen could have gotten into the Martian atmosphere is from the breakdown of water when Mars was losing its magnetic field,\u201d said Lanza, the lead author of a paper outlining the results in Geophysical Research Letters. \u201cIt\u2019s thought that at this time in Mars\u2019 history, water was much more abundant.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Martian magnetic field eroded, cosmic and solar radiation penetrated to the planet\u2019s surface, destroying water molecules and splitting them into hydrogen and oxygen. The lighter hydrogen atoms escaped into space, but the heavier oxygen atoms were trapped by Mars\u2019 gravity, becoming embedded in rocks, scientists said.<\/p>\n

That is what gives Mars its characteristic rust color. But manganese oxides need more oxygen to form than the widespread red iron oxides.<\/p>\n

In a joint statement released by NASA and LANL, Lanza added that it is hard to determine exactly how the Martian atmosphere might have got its oxygen.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s important to note that this idea represents a departure in our understanding for how planetary atmospheres might become oxygenated,\u201d Lanza said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbundant atmospheric oxygen has been treated as a so-called biosignature, or a sign of extant life, but this process does not require life,\u201d the joint statement said.<\/p>\n

The manganese deposits are not limited to the Curiosity rover\u2019s exploration zone in Gale Crater. NASA\u2019s long-lived Opportunity rover recently discovered similar material in Meridiani Planum on the other side of Mars.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This scene shows NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover at a location called \u201cWindjana,\u201d where the rover found rocks containing manganese-oxide minerals, which require abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS High concentrations of manganese oxides found in Martian rocks by NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover indicate the red planet\u2019s atmosphere once had much more oxygen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2927,2942,1183,367,2944,1561],"class_list":["post-15408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-curiosity","tag-gale-crater","tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","tag-mars","tag-mount-sharp","tag-planetary-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}