{"id":19626,"date":"2015-08-04T17:08:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T09:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/three-years-after-mars-landing-curiosity-rover-faces-new-mysteries\/"},"modified":"2015-08-04T17:08:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T09:08:27","slug":"three-years-after-mars-landing-curiosity-rover-faces-new-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/three-years-after-mars-landing-curiosity-rover-faces-new-mysteries\/","title":{"rendered":"Three years after Mars landing, Curiosity rover faces new mysteries"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_191524\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-191524\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-191524 size-full-width\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150803-vasavada-620x469.jpg\" alt=\"Ashwin Vasavada\" width=\"620\" height=\"469\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150803-vasavada-620x469.jpg 620w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150803-vasavada-1240x938.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-191524\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ashwin Vasavada became the project scientist for NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover mission in January. His role is to coordinate efforts of an international team of nearly 500 scientists. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Three years after NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover landed on Mars, scientists are celebrating a curious milestone: Although the six-wheeled, plutonium-powered robot has lasted a year longer than they planned for, Curiosity has been moving more slowly than they planned for.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn one sense, we\u2019re not as far as maybe we would have predicted before landing\u2026. Looking in hindsight at what we\u2019ve studied in Gale Crater, we had a very naive understanding of how things would unfold once we landed,\u201d Ashwin Vasavada, the $2.5 billion mission\u2019s project scientist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during a&nbsp;GeekWire interview.<\/p>\n<p>That may sound like a bad thing, but it turned out to be very, very good. Curiosity and its handlers have been taking their time since that amazing touchdown on Aug. 5, 2012, largely because there\u2019s more to discover than they expected. For example, a months-long detour to a place called Yellowknife Bay met one of the mission\u2019s prime objectives: the identification of an ancient lake bed where habitable conditions existed&nbsp;billions of years ago.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Curiosity Rover Report (August 2015):  Three Years on Mars!\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Txti0XLxOzI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Vasavada&nbsp;still ranks that find as the mission\u2019s top achievement&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;but now that Curiosity is finally making its way up a 3-mile-high peak known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, he and his colleagues are filling out&nbsp;an even&nbsp;bigger picture. Curiosity is studying different elevations in the mountain\u2019s layered bedrock \u2013 and revealing how Mars\u2019 climate morphed from an ancient environment that was warm and wet into the cold, dry world we see today.<\/p>\n<p>Vasavada said the terrain through which Curiosity has been traveling built up more than 3.5&nbsp;billion years ago, during a key geological period known as the Noachian-Hesperian boundary. \u201cThat is the probably most critical&nbsp;time&nbsp;in Mars\u2019 history, in terms of transitions, because Noachian Mars was definitely a wetter planet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>As Curiosity moves up the slopes of Mount Sharp, it\u2019s documenting shifts in the composition of&nbsp;the sedimentary rock.&nbsp;Those shifts indicate that Mars\u2019 water gradually became more acidic and less friendly to life. \u201cThe chemistry is slightly changing,\u201d Vasavada said.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s consistent with a scenario backed up by other data, not only from Curiosity but from other Mars probes as well: The Red Planet\u2019s atmosphere lacked the protective shield of a global magnetosphere, and so it was stripped away by solar radiation. The atmospheric conditions conducive to liquid water and habitability faded away as a result.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_191529\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-191529\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-191529\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150803-lamoose-620x461.jpg\" alt=\"Lamoose rock\" width=\"620\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150803-lamoose-620x461.jpg 620w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150803-lamoose.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-191529\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fragment of silica-rich rock dubbed \u201cLamoose\u201d is shown in this picture taken by the Curiosity rover\u2019s Mars Hand Lens Imager. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ MSSS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Did life on Mars fade away as well? Or did life ever exist there to begin with? Although Curiosity isn\u2019t built to detect the direct signs of life directly, it\u2019s looking for carbon-bearing chemicals that could have been left behind by ancient organisms. Some such&nbsp;chemicals were identified last year, but scientists&nbsp;couldn\u2019t determine whether they were produced biologically.<\/p>\n<p>Now the team is&nbsp;focusing on a promising patch of rock that has&nbsp;surprisingly high levels of silica. There\u2019s a good chance that the interior of the rock may harbor ancient organic material, so&nbsp;scientists are using Curiosity\u2019s percussive rock drill and its onboard chemical lab to find out what\u2019s there.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-188079 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1.png\" alt=\"pluto\" width=\"250\" height=\"189\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1.png 250w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1-200x151.png 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/pluto1-132x100.png 132w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\"><br \/>\n<strong>Science journalist Alan Boyle<\/strong>&nbsp;is the author of &#8220;The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made A Big Difference.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s nice is that it\u2019s a mystery for us to solve,\u201d Vasavada said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to result in something new that we learn about Mars, the fact that there\u2019s all that silica there. It\u2019d be boring if all the drill holes had the same chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After three years of discovery and more than seven miles of grueling travel, the rover team has had to cope with Curiosity\u2019s worn-down wheels&nbsp;as well as a glitchy drill, but Vasavada is confident those signs of age won\u2019t slow&nbsp;the rover down too much. \u201cWith the success of our drilling activities this week, that has gone down on the \u2018worry-meter,&#8217;\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there\u2019s nothing to stop Curiosity from continuing its&nbsp;climb up Mount Sharp&nbsp;\u2013 unless, of course, Vasavada and his colleagues <em>want<\/em> to stop, for science\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n<p>So what\u2019s next? Find out at 5 p.m. PT today when Vasavada and I discuss Curiosity\u2019s past and future&nbsp;on \u201cVirtually Speaking Science,\u201d an hourlong talk show on BlogTalkRadio. If you\u2019ve got a Second Life avatar, come&nbsp;join&nbsp;the audience in the Exploratorium\u2019s virtual&nbsp;auditorium. And if you miss the live program, never fear: You can always download the&nbsp;podcast&nbsp;from BlogTalkRadio or iTunes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ashwin Vasavada became the project scientist for NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover mission in January. His role is to coordinate efforts of an international team of nearly 500 scientists. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech) Three years after NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover landed on Mars, scientists are celebrating a curious milestone: Although the six-wheeled, plutonium-powered robot has lasted a year [&hellip;]<\/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":[2927,367,190,5634],"class_list":["post-19626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-curiosity","tag-mars","tag-nasa","tag-virtually-speaking-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19626"}],"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=19626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}