{"id":18004,"date":"2019-06-24T19:19:33","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T11:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/that-burst-of-martian-methane-is-long-gone-but-mystery-of-life-on-mars-remains\/"},"modified":"2019-06-24T19:19:33","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T11:19:33","slug":"that-burst-of-martian-methane-is-long-gone-but-mystery-of-life-on-mars-remains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/that-burst-of-martian-methane-is-long-gone-but-mystery-of-life-on-mars-remains\/","title":{"rendered":"That burst of Martian methane is long gone, but mystery of life on Mars remains"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
This image was taken by the left Navcam on NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover on June 18. It shows part of Teal Ridge, which the rover has been studying within a region called the \u201cclay-bearing unit.\u201d (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BELLEVUE, Wash. \u2014 NASA says the record-setting belch of Martian methane that its Curiosity rover detected last week has faded away, leaving some big questions hanging in the air: Where did the gas come from, and what were its origins?<\/p>\n

Much of the methane on Earth is produced biologically, from sources ranging from microbes to the digestive tracts of cows and humans. But methane can also be produced through geological, completely non-biological processes. For example, methane makes up about 5 percent of the atmosphere of the Saturnian moon Titan, which is so cold that methane and other hydrocarbons pool up in lakes and rivers.<\/p>\n

Curiosity\u2019s onboard chemistry lab \u2014 known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM \u2014 has an instrument that can sense methane levels in the Red Planet\u2019s atmosphere, and those levels usually amount to less than 1 part per billion by volume. But SAM has registered several curious methane spikes during its seven years of surface operations \u2014 including a rise to 6 parts per billion in 2013 that got NASA\u2019s attention, and another detection that rose even higher during the following Martian year.<\/p>\n

Last week, methane levels spiked to the highest levels ever detected by Curiosity: 21 parts per billion. That caused the SAM science team to change their plans for the weekend and make follow-up measurements.<\/p>\n

Those measurements were sent back to the science team this morning, and they showed that methane levels were back to their usual level.<\/p>\n

\u201cA plume came, and a plume went,\u201d SAM\u2019s principal investigator, Paul Mahaffy of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center, reported here at the Astrobiology Science Conference. \u201cWe\u2019re very confident of the measurement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quick rise and fall suggests that last week\u2019s spike was similar to the previously observed phenomena, albeit on a significantly larger scale.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator for the SAM instrument suite on NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover, discusses last week\u2019s methane detection. (AGU via Livestream)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year, a team of scientists analyzed the 2013 readings from Curiosity as well as the European Space Agency\u2019s Mars Express orbiter, and suggested that such spikes occur when seismic shocks on Mars free up reserves of methane that are trapped beneath the Martian surface. Such a mechanism could well have been behind last week\u2019s spike.<\/p>\n

Mars Express hasn\u2019t reported any methane spikes lately. Nor has ESA\u2019s Trace Gas Orbiter, which is designed to make high-resolution measurements of methane and other gases in Mars\u2019 atmosphere. \u201cWe\u2019re coordinating with them, and we\u2019re very happy to make coordinated measurements,\u201d Mahaffy said.<\/p>\n

Such measurements offer the best hope for tracking down the sources of Martian methane, be they biological or purely geological.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe methane mystery continues,\u201d Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity\u2019s project scientist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in NASA\u2019s latest online update. \u201cWe\u2019re more motivated than ever to keep measuring and put our brains together to figure out how methane behaves in the Martian atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This image was taken by the left Navcam on NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover on June 18. It shows part of Teal Ridge, which the rover has been studying within a region called the \u201cclay-bearing unit.\u201d (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Photo) BELLEVUE, Wash. \u2014 NASA says the record-setting belch of Martian methane that its Curiosity rover detected last […]<\/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":[4986,1874,2927,367,2505,190],"class_list":["post-18004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-abscicon","tag-astrobiology","tag-curiosity","tag-mars","tag-methane","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18004"}],"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=18004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}