The Mars Phoenix mission has finally managed to bring NASA back in to the spotlight. The hype is beginning to rival the days man would set foot on the moon, but this time, we’re hoping that we find life on another planet.
But over the weekend, as NASA spokesman Duane Brown describes it, a mass of “speculation and rumor” cropped up regarding a discovery that the Phoenix Lander had made. The Phoenix Lander had discovered perchlorates in the soil of Mars, and this sparked rumors that there was the possibility of life on Mars, as well as the opposite, that there was a hindrance to life on Mars.
And so NASA dragged their scientists in to a press-conference with the intention of shedding a little light on what was happening behind the scenes. But due to the fact that there are literally no confirmed results, let alone peer-reviewed, the scientists were doing so begrudgingly. Mike Meyer, the head of NASA’s Mars efforts, said, “We’re here today to announce a nonannouncement—more experiments and time are needed to resolve the results of the science experiments.”
The leader of the project, Peter Smith, was a little more relaxed about the move. He described the decision to hold this press conference as a “break with scientific tradition” but that it was akin to “opening a window to allow the public to see the scientific process in action.”
Perchlorates are the salts that are derived from perchloric acid, and are found naturally on Earth, in such places as Chile’s hyper-arid Atacama Desert. The compound is stable, according to NASA’s press release, and does not destroy organic material under standard circumstances. In fact, some microorganisms on Earth are fueled by processes that involve perchlorates. But most importantly to the discovery on Mars, is that perchlorates are oxidants, in other words, they can release oxygen.
“Finding perchlorates is neither good nor bad for life, but it does make us reassess how we think about life on Mars,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA), the instrument that includes the wet chemistry laboratory. If confirmed, the result is exciting, Hecht said, “because different types of perchlorate salts have interesting properties that may bear on the way things work on Mars if — and that’s a big ‘if ‘ — the results from our two teaspoons of soil are representative of all of Mars, or at least a significant portion of the planet.”
Samples of dirt had been taken from two locations, the Dodo-Goldilocks trench on Sol 25 (June 25) and Snow White trench on Sol 41 (July 6). When the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) heated a sample of the soil from the Dodo-Goldilocks trench, it detected a release of oxygen. According to TEGA lead scientist William Boynton of the University of Arizona, perchlorates are one of several possible sources for this release of oxygen.
However Boynton and his team are unsure what they are dealing with. Though some perchlorates will not release chlorine when heated, some will, and the lack of chlorine being emitted by any of the samples run through TEGA are muddying the waters.
Which brings everything back to the fact that no one is really quite certain just what any of this means. NASA may very well have found perchlorates on Mars, and they may not have. What has to happen now, and what NASA scientists probably wanted to do anyway before they made any of this public, is nail down just what it is they have found in the Mars soil.
Source:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080805.html
