Life On Mars: For NASA Scientists, It's All About Curiosity

If the Mars Curiosity rover had landed on the red planet approximately 3 billion years ago, it might not have been alone.

That's the message that NASA scientists shared Tuesday when they announced that ancient Mars could have supported living micro-organisms.

"This is the most definitive habitable environment that we've described and recorded," said NASA Ames' David Blake, principal investigator for Curiosity's chemical and mineral (CheMin) instruments.

The Curiosity rover—which arrived in August on Mars  filled with experiments including CheMin and ChemCam from NASA Ames—has been busy zapping, drilling, sorting and testing rocks found in a stream channel descending from the Gale Crater.

From these rocks, NASA scientists have identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon—elements essential for habitable, organic life.

This sedimentary rock formation demonstrated the existence of water because of its texture, structure and chemistry, according to John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at the California Institute of Technology.

Grotzinger explained that the rocks showed no evidence of acidity and had a neutral pH. "It looks like a rock that we could have found on Earth," he said. Grotzinger added that the rocks absorbed water, and had just enough for microbes and the minerals in the rocks to act like batteries, which primitive organisms used as energy to survive.

This is the second time that Curiosity found rocks with these characteristics. An earlier site produced the same evidence.

Helping rover decide where to focus its efforts is the ChemCam. The ChemCam is a laser on Curiosity that aims its beam on rock samples up to 20 feet away, allowing the rover to analyze these materials. NASA Ames interplanetary researcher and local resident Chris McKay works on this project.

"When we are looking for life on Mars we are not looking for plants or animals, we are looking for micro-organisms, bacteria," said McKay, adding that bacteria, for example, can live in harsh environments with no oxygen or organic material. He spoke to Patch at NASA Ames on Moffett Field.

"What we have found on Mars is an environment that was habitable in the past, billions of years ago, this environment had water, and it had an energy chemical source that we know bacteria could use."

"The environment probably would have been habitable for plants," he said.

The NASA team will lose contact with Curiosity during the month of April, when the planet will travel behind the sun. Then experiments will step up again in May, and that includes a trip to Mt. Sharp to gather more rock samples.

Curiosity's mission has been set up to last about two years, but could take longer. Afterwards, the site will be turned to a 2020 rover.

While Curiosity's mission won't be to find the conclusive evidence of life on Mars, NASA feels more prepared for the 2020 rover mission—in part because of the success of the recent ascent and descent into Mars.

"We want to use our descent capability for the 2020 mission and populate with new experiments," Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program said. "We'll use the best instruments we have for it."

And insofar as Curiosity's accomplishments to date are concerned, Meyer enthusiasm said it all.

"As far as I'm concerned this is fantastic; the rest is gravy," he said.

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