In a stunning new development, NASA scientists have confirmed that the Curiosity rover has discovered the largest organic molecules ever found on the Martian surface. The groundbreaking analysis of an existing rock sample, “Cumberland,” within Curiosity’s onboard lab revealed the presence of decane, undecane, and dodecane – compounds with 10, 11, and 12 carbon atoms respectively.
These molecules are believed to be fragments of preserved fatty acids, key building blocks of life as we know it on Earth. While non-biological origins are possible, the size of these newly detected molecules significantly boosts the potential for the preservation of complex biosignatures on the red planet.
This discovery builds upon years of tantalizing findings by Curiosity, including the detection of smaller organic molecules, organic salts, and the measurement of total organic carbon comparable to Earth’s most extreme environments. The new data suggests that larger, more complex organic compounds could have survived for billions of years despite harsh Martian conditions.
The network of cracks in this Martian rock slab called “Old Soaker” may have formed from the drying of a mud layer more than 3 billion years ago. The view spans about 3 feet (90 centimeters) left-to-right and combines three images taken by the MAHLI camera on the arm of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Lead author Caroline Freissinet emphasized the significance, stating, “Our study proves that, even today, by analyzing Mars samples, we could detect chemical signatures of past life—if it ever existed on Mars.”
Scientists are particularly intrigued by the carbon chain length of the presumed fatty acids (11-13 carbons), as non-biological processes typically yield shorter chains. This raises the exciting possibility of longer-chain fatty acids, often associated with biological activity, being present.
While the exact origin of these molecules remains under investigation, this major breakthrough reinforces the critical need for Mars Sample Return missions to conduct in-depth analysis with advanced Earth-based instruments.
“We are ready to take the next big step and bring Mars samples home to our labs to settle the debate about life on Mars,” declared Dr. Daniel Glavin.
This latest discovery marks a significant leap in our understanding of Martian organic chemistry and further fuels the compelling narrative that Mars may have once harbored the conditions necessary for life. The search for evidence of past life on the red planet has just intensified.
The mission’s first two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – could help scientists better understand the Red Planet and engineers prepare for future missions there.
NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged two new samples from the Martian surface on Dec. 2 and 6. But unlike the 15 rock cores collected to date, these newest samples came from a pile of wind-blown sand and dust similar to but smaller than a dune. Now contained in special metal collection tubes, one of these two samples will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface sometime this month as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.
Scientists want to study Martian samples with powerful lab equipment on Earth to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to better understand the processes that have shaped the surface of Mars. Most of the samples will be rock; however, researchers also want to examine regolith – broken rock and dust – not only because of what it can teach us about geological processes and the environment on Mars, but also to mitigate some of the challenges astronauts will face on the Red Planet. Regolith can affect everything from spacesuits to solar panels, so it’s just as interesting to engineers as it is to scientists.
Two holes are left in the Martian surface after NASA’s Perseverance rover used a specialized drill bit to collect the mission’s first samples of regolith on Dec. 2 and 6, 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
As with rock cores, these latest samples were collected using a drill on the end of the rover’s robotic arm. But for the regolith samples, Perseverance used a drill bit that looks like a spike with small holes on one end to gather loose material.
Engineers designed the special drill bit after extensive testing with simulated regolith developed by JPL. Called Mojave Mars Simulant, it’s made of volcanic rock crushed into a variety of particle sizes, from fine dust to coarse pebbles, based on images of regolith and data collected by previous Mars missions.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this image of regolith – broken rock and dust – on Dec. 2, 2022. This regolith will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Everything we learn about the size, shape, and chemistry of regolith grains helps us design and test better tools for future missions,” said Iona Tirona of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the Perseverance mission. Tirona was the activity lead for operations to collect the recent regolith sample. “The more data we have, the more realistic our simulants can be.”
The Challenge of Dust
Studying regolith up close could help engineers design future Mars missions – as well as the equipment used by future Martian astronauts. Dust and regolith can damage spacecraft and science instruments alike. Regolith can jam sensitive parts and slow down rovers on the surface. The grains could also pose unique challenges to astronauts: Lunar regolith was discovered to be sharp enough to tear microscopic holes in spacesuits during the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Regolith could be helpful if packed against a habitat to shield astronauts from radiation, but it also contains risks: The Martian surface contains perchlorate, a toxic chemical that could threaten the health of astronauts if large amounts were accidentally inhaled or ingested.
“If we have a more permanent presence on Mars, we need to know how the dust and regolith will interact with our spacecraft and habitats,” said Perseverance team member Erin Gibbons, a McGill University doctoral candidate who uses Mars regolith simulants as part of her work with the rover’s rock-vaporizing laser, called SuperCam.
“Some of those dust grains could be as fine as cigarette smoke, and could get into an astronaut’s breathing apparatus,” added Gibbons, who was previously part of a NASA program studying human-robot exploration of Mars. “We want a fuller picture of which materials would be harmful to our explorers, whether they’re human or robotic.”
Besides answering questions about health and safety hazards, a tube of Martian regolith could inspire scientific wonder. Looking at it under a microscope would reveal a kaleidoscope of grains in different shapes and colors. Each one would be like a jigsaw puzzle piece, all of them joined together by wind and water over billions of years.
“There are so many different materials mixed into Martian regolith,” said Libby Hausrath of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, one of Perseverance’s sample return scientists. “Each sample represents an integrated history of the planet’s surface.”
As an expert on Earth’s soils, Hausrath is most interested in finding signs of interaction between water and rock. On Earth, life is found practically everywhere there’s water. The same could have been true for Mars billions of years ago, when the planet’s climate was much more like Earth’s.
A team at the Lab has invented new technologies that could be used by future missions to analyze liquid samples from watery worlds and look for signs of alien life.
Are we alone in the universe? An answer to that age-old question has seemed tantalizingly within reach since the discovery of ice-encrusted moons in our solar system with potentially habitable subsurface oceans. But looking for evidence of life in a frigid sea hundreds of millions of miles away poses tremendous challenges. The science equipment used must be exquisitely complex yet capable of withstanding intense radiation and cryogenic temperatures. What’s more, the instruments must be able to take diverse, independent, complementary measurements that together could produce scientifically defensible proof of life.
To address some of the difficulties that future life-detection missions might encounter, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has developed OWLS, a powerful suite of science instruments unlike any other. Short for Oceans Worlds Life Surveyor, OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples. It features eight instruments – all automated – that, in a lab on Earth, would require the work of several dozen people.
JPL’s OWLS combines powerful chemical-analysis instruments that look for the building blocks of life with microscopes that search for cells. This version of OWLS would be miniaturized and customized for use on future missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One vision for OWLS is to use it to analyze frozen water from a vapor plume erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. “How do you take a sprinkling of ice a billion miles from Earth and determine – in the one chance you’ve got, while everyone on Earth is waiting with bated breath – whether there’s evidence of life?” said Peter Willis, the project’s co-principal investigator and science lead. “We wanted to create the most powerful instrument system you could design for that situation to look for both chemical and biological signs of life.”
OWLS has been funded by JPL Next, a technology accelerator program run by the Lab’s Office of Space Technology. In June, after a half-decade of work, the project team tested its equipment – currently the size of a few filing cabinets – on the salty waters of Mono Lake in California’s Eastern Sierra. OWLS found chemical and cellular evidence of life, using its built-in software to identify that evidence without human intervention.
“We have demonstrated the first generation of the OWLS suite,” Willis said. “The next step is to customize and miniaturize it for specific mission scenarios.”
A key difficulty the OWLS team faced was how to process liquid samples in space. On Earth, scientists can rely on gravity, a reasonable lab temperature, and air pressure to keep samples in place, but those conditions don’t exist on a spacecraft hurtling through the solar system or on the surface of a frozen moon. So the team designed two instruments that can extract a liquid sample and process it in the conditions of space.
Since it’s not clear what form life might take on an ocean world, OWLS also needed to include the broadest possible array of instruments, capable of measuring a size range from single molecules to microorganisms. To that end, the project joined two subsystems: one that employs a variety of chemical analysis techniques using multiple instruments, and one with several microscopes to examine visual clues.
Water ice and vapor are seen spraying from Saturn’s frozen moon Enceladus, which hosts a hidden subsurface ocean, in this image captured by NASA’s Cassini mission during a 2010 flyby. OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples from such plumes. Credit:NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Full Image Details
OWLS’ microscope system would be the first in space capable of imaging cells. Developed in conjunction with scientists at Portland State University in Oregon, it combines a digital holographic microscope, which can identify cells and motion throughout the volume of a sample, with two fluorescent imagers, which use dyes to observe chemical content and cellular structures. Together, they provide overlapping views at a resolution of less than a single micron, or about 0.00004 inches.
Dubbed Extant Life Volumetric Imaging System (ELVIS), the microscope subsystem has no moving parts – a rarity. And it uses machine-learning algorithms to both home in on lifelike movement and detect objects lit up by fluorescent molecules, whether naturally occurring in living organisms or as added dyes bound to parts of cells.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack without having to pick up and examine every single piece of hay,” said co-principal investigator Chris Lindensmith, who leads the microscope team. “We’re basically grabbing big armfuls of hay and saying, ‘Oh, there’s needles here, here, and here.’”
To examine much tinier forms of evidence, OWLS uses its Organic Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis System (OCEANS), which essentially pressure-cooks liquid samples and feeds them to instruments that search for the chemical building blocks of life: all varieties of amino acids, as well as fatty acids and organic compounds. The system is so sensitive, it can even detect unknown forms of carbon. Willis, who led development of OCEANS, compares it to a shark that can smell just one molecule of blood in a billion molecules of water – and also tell the blood type. It would be only the second instrument system to perform liquid chemical analysis in space, after the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander.
OCEANS uses a technique called capillary electrophoresis – basically, running an electric current through a sample to separate it into its components. The sample is then routed to three types of detectors, including a mass spectrometer, the most powerful tool for identifying organic compounds.
Sending It Home
These subsystems produce massive amounts of data, just an estimated 0.0001% of which could be sent back to faraway Earth because of data transmission rates that are more limited than dial-up internet from the 1980s. So OWLS has been designed with what’s called “onboard science instrument autonomy.” Using algorithms, computers would analyze, summarize, prioritize, and select only the most interesting data to be sent home while also offering a “manifest” of information still on board.
“We’re starting to ask questions now that necessitate more sophisticated instruments,” said Lukas Mandrake, the project’s instrument autonomy system engineer. “Are some of these other planets habitable? Is there defensible scientific evidence for life rather than a hint that it might be there? That requires instruments that take a lot of data, and that’s what OWLS and its science autonomy is set up to accomplish.”
JPL’s Venus Aerial Robotic Balloon Prototype Aces Test Flights
A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project.
The intense pressure, heat, and corrosive gases of Venus’ surface are enough to disable even the most robust spacecraft in a matter of hours. But a few dozen miles overhead, the thick atmosphere is far more hospitable to robotic exploration.
One concept envisions pairing a balloon with a Venus orbiter, the two working in tandem to study Earth’s sister planet. While the orbiter would remain far above the atmosphere, taking science measurements and serving as a communication relay, an aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, about 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter would travel into it.
To test this concept, a team of scientists and engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Near Space Corporation in Tillamook, Oregon, recently carried out two successful flights of a prototype balloon that’s about a third of that size.
The shimmering silver balloon ascended more than 4,000 feet (1 kilometer) over Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to a region of Earth’s atmosphere that approximates the temperature and density the aerobot would experience about 180,000 feet (55 kilometers) above Venus. Coordinated by Near Space, these tests represent a milestone in proving the concept’s suitability for accessing a region of Venus’ atmosphere too low for orbiters to reach, but where a balloon mission could operate for weeks or even months.
“We’re extremely happy with the performance of the prototype. It was launched, demonstrated controlled-altitude maneuvers, and was recovered in good condition after both flights,” said robotics technologist Jacob Izraelevitz, who leads the balloon development as the JPL principal investigator of the flight tests. “We’ve recorded a mountain of data from these flights and are looking forward to using it to improve our simulation models before exploring our sister planet.”
The only balloon-borne exploration of Venus’ atmosphere to date was a part of the twin Soviet Vega 1 and 2 missions that arrived at the planet in 1985. The two balloons (which were about 11.5 feet, or 3.6 meters, in diameter when filled with helium) lasted a little over 46 hours before their instruments’ batteries ran out. Their short time in the Venusian atmosphere provided a tantalizing hint of the science that could be achieved by a larger, longer-duration balloon platform floating within the planet’s atmosphere.
A prototype aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, is readied for a sunrise test flight at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in July 2022, by team members from JPL and Near Space Corporation. The aerobot successfully completed two flights, demonstrating controlled altitude flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
‘Roving’ the Skies
The ultimate goal of the aerobot would be to travel on the Venusian winds, floating from east to west, circumnavigating the planet for at least 100 days. The aerobot would serve as a platform for a range of science investigations, from monitoring the atmosphere for acoustic waves generated by venusquakes to analyzing the chemical composition of the clouds. The accompanying orbiter would receive data from the aerobot and relay it to Earth while providing a global view of the planet.
Much like a Mars rover is commanded to drive to an interesting rock or other feature, the aerobot can be directed to raise and lower its altitude – something the Vega balloons couldn’t do – to conduct science between about 171,000 and 203,000 feet (52 and 62 kilometers) within Venus’ atmosphere.
The prototype balloon was fabricated using Near Space’s techniques for performance aerospace inflatables. Designed as a “balloon within a balloon,” it has a rigid inner reservoir filled with helium under high pressure and an encapsulating outer helium balloon that can expand and contract. To increase altitude, helium vents from the inner reservoir into the outer balloon, which expands to give the aerobot additional buoyancy. When it’s time to reduce altitude, helium is pumped back into the reservoir, causing the outer balloon to shrink and decrease the aerobot’s buoyancy.
“The success of these test flights is a huge deal for us: We’ve successfully demonstrated the technology we’ll need for investigating the clouds of Venus,” said Paul Byrne, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis and aerobot science collaborator. “These tests form the foundation for how we can achieve long-term robotic exploration high above Venus’ hellish surface.”
The one-third scale prototype aerobot is designed to withstand the corrosive chemicals in Venus’ atmosphere. During the flights, the balloon’s materials were tested for the first time, giving the team confidence that a larger aerobot design could operate in Venus skies. Credit: Near Space Corporation
No Picnic in the Clouds
While this region of Venus’ atmosphere is more forgiving than its lower reaches, long-duration flights in the rocky planet’s clouds, which contain sulfuric acid and other corrosive chemicals, would be no picnic. So the multilayered material developed for the aerobot’s outer balloon includes an acid-proof coating, a metallization layer to reduce solar heating, and a structural inner layer that keeps it strong enough to carry the science instruments below. New techniques have also been developed to ensure a long-duration acid-proof seal with minimal helium leakage from the seams.
“The materials being used for Venus survivability are challenging to fabricate with, and the robustness of handling we’ve demonstrated in the Nevada launch and recovery gives us confidence for balloon’s reliability on Venus,” said co-investigator Tim Lachenmeier, chief executive officer of Near Space.
While the recent Nevada tests were a milestone for a future concept designed with Venus in mind, the researchers say the technology could also be used by high-altitude science balloons that need to control their altitude in Earth’s skies.
An unexpected ‘heat wave’ of 700 degrees Celsius, extending 130,000 kilometres (10 Earth diameters) in Jupiter’s atmosphere, has been discovered. James O’Donoghue, of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has presented the results this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada.
Jupiter’s atmosphere, famous for its characteristic multicoloured vortices, is also unexpectedly hot: in fact, it is hundreds of degrees hotter than models predict. Due to its orbital distance millions of kilometres from the Sun, the giant planet receives under 4% of the amount of sunlight compared to Earth, and its upper atmosphere should theoretically be a frigid -70 degrees Celsius. Instead, its cloud tops are measured everywhere at over 400 degrees Celsius.
“Last year we produced – and presented at EPSC2021 – the first maps of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere capable of identifying the dominant heat sources,” said Dr O’Donoghue. “Thanks to these maps, we demonstrated that Jupiter’s auroras were a possible mechanism that could explain these temperatures.”
Just like the Earth, Jupiter experiences auroras around its poles as an effect of the solar wind. However, while Earth’s auroras are transient and only occur when solar activity is intense, auroras at Jupiter are permanent and have a variable intensity. The powerful auroras can heat the region around the poles to over 700 degrees Celsius, and global winds can redistribute the heat globally around Jupiter.
A panning-view of Jupiter’s upper atmospheric temperatures, 1000 kilometers above the cloud tops. Jupiter is shown on top of a visible image for context. In this snapshot, the auroral region (near the northern pole, in yellow/white) appears to have shed a massive, planetary-scale wave of heating towards the equator. The feature is over 130,000 kilometers long, or 10-Earth diameters, and is hundreds of degrees warmer than the background. For video see: https://youtu.be/gWT0QwSoVls/CREDIT:Hubble / NASA / ESA / A. Simon (NASA GSFC) / J. Schmidt. Credit: James O’Donoghue
Looking more deeply through their data, Dr O’Donoghue and his team discovered the spectacular ‘heat wave’ just below the northern aurora, and found that it was travelling towards the equator at a speed of thousands of kilometres per hour.
The heat wave was probably triggered by a pulse of enhanced solar wind plasma impacting Jupiter’s magnetic field, which boosted auroral heating and forced hot gases to expand and spill out towards the equator.
“While the auroras continuously deliver heat to the rest of the planet, these heat wave ‘events’ represent an additional, significant energy source,” added Dr O’Donoghue. “These findings add to our knowledge of Jupiter’s upper-atmospheric weather and climate, and are a great help in trying to solve the ‘energy crisis’ problem that plagues research into the giant planets.”
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this distant planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras reveal the ice giant in a whole new light.
Most striking in Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s rings – some of which have not been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter dust bands.
“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” notes Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for Webb. Webb’s extremely stable and precise image quality permits these very faint rings to be detected so close to Neptune.
Neptune has fascinated researchers since its discovery in 1846. Located 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Neptune orbits in the remote, dark region of the outer solar system. At that extreme distance, the Sun is so small and faint that high noon on Neptune is similar to a dim twilight on Earth.
Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) images objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue to Webb. In fact, the methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present. Such methane-ice clouds are prominent as bright streaks and spots, which reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane gas. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
This planet is characterized as an ice giant due to the chemical make-up of its interior. Compared to the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune is much richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This is readily apparent in Neptune’s signature blue appearance in Hubble Space Telescope images at visible wavelengths, caused by small amounts of gaseous methane.
Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) images objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue to Webb. In fact, the methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present. Such methane-ice clouds are prominent as bright streaks and spots, which reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane gas. Images from other observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, have recorded these rapidly evolving cloud features over the years.
More subtly, a thin line of brightness circling the planet’s equator could be a visual signature of global atmospheric circulation that powers Neptune’s winds and storms. The atmosphere descends and warms at the equator, and thus glows at infrared wavelengths more than the surrounding, cooler gases.
Neptune’s 164-year orbit means its northern pole, at the top of this image, is just out of view for astronomers, but the Webb images hint at an intriguing brightness in that area. A previously-known vortex at the southern pole is evident in Webb’s view, but for the first time Webb has revealed a continuous band of high-latitude clouds surrounding it.
What do we see in Webb’s latest image of the ice giant Neptune? Webb captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton, dominates this Webb portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb’s images. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons. Dominating this Webb portrait of Neptune is a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb’s images, but this is not a star. Rather, this is Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton.
Covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen, Triton reflects an average of 70 percent of the sunlight that hits it. It far outshines Neptune in this image because the planet’s atmosphere is darkened by methane absorption at these near-infrared wavelengths. Triton orbits Neptune in an unusual backward (retrograde) orbit, leading astronomers to speculate that this moon was originally a Kuiper belt object that was gravitationally captured by Neptune. Additional Webb studies of both Triton and Neptune are planned in the coming year.
The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years, which is the first of its kind to have recorded seismic and acoustic waves from an impact on the Red Planet.
NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021, detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since its landing in 2018.
A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight’s location, a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.
The first of the four confirmed meteoroids – the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground – made the most dramatic entrance: It entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site and confirmed the location using its black-and-white Context Camera to find three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters.
“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts. Finally, scientists confirmed three other impacts had occurred on May 27, 2020; Feb. 18, 2021; and Aug. 31, 2021.
Researchers have puzzled over why they haven’t detected more meteoroid impacts on Mars. The Red Planet is next to the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which provides an ample supply of space rocks to scar the planet’s surface. Because Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as thick as Earth’s, more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.
InSight’s seismometer has also detected over 1,300 marsquakes. Provided by France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the instrument is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. But the Sept. 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.
InSight’s team suspects that other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere. But now that the distinctive seismic signature of an impact on Mars has been discovered, scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data.
Listen to a Meteoroid Hitting the Red Planet
The sound of a meteoroid striking Mars – created from data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander – is like a “bloop” due to a peculiar atmospheric effect. In this audio clip, the sound can be heard three times: when the meteoroid enters the Martian atmosphere, explodes into pieces, and impacts the surface.
The four meteoroid impacts confirmed so far produced small quakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Those smaller quakes provide scientists with only a glimpse into the Martian crust, while seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5 event that occurred in May 2022, can also reveal details about the planet’s mantle and core.
But the impacts will be critical to refining Mars’ timeline. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said the paper’s lead author, Raphael Garcia of Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”
Scientists can approximate the age of a planet’s surface by counting its impact craters: The more they see, the older the surface. By calibrating their statistical models based on how often they see impacts occurring now, scientists can then estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system’s history.
InSight’s data, in combination with orbital images, can be used to rebuild a meteoroid’s trajectory and the size of its shock wave. Every meteoroid creates a shock wave as it hits the atmosphere and an explosion as it hits the ground. These events send sound waves through the atmosphere. The bigger the explosion, the more this sound wave tilts the ground when it reaches InSight. The lander’s seismometer is sensitive enough to measure how much the ground tilts from such an event and in what direction.
“We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”
The lander still has time to study Mars. Dust buildup on the lander’s solar panels is reducing its power and will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”
Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.
“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallization of magma – discovered on the crater floor,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”
NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
“Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.
SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the aqueous environments in which they formed.
What Is Organic Matter?
Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don’t require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed. In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the SHERLOC instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date.
“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”
Rendering of Perseverance, whose RIMFAX technology is exploring what lies beneath the Martian surface. Photo: NASA/JPL/Caltech/FFI
The first step in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its rock-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.
The geologic diversity of the samples already carried in the rover is so good that the rover team is looking into depositing select tubes near the base of the delta in about two months. After depositing the cache, the rover will continue its delta explorations.
“I’ve studied Martian habitability and geology for much of my career and know first-hand the incredible scientific value of returning a carefully collected set of Mars rocks to Earth,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance’s fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal. We will learn so much.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
NASA will provide live coverage with commentary of the upcoming Artemis I cryogenic demonstration test beginning at 7:15 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 21.
The demonstration test will allow teams to confirm the repair to a hydrogen leak seen during an early September Artemis I launch attempt, evaluate updated propellant loading procedures, and conduct additional evaluations. The demonstration will conclude when the objectives for the test have been met.+
Live coverage of the test will air on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. While NASA is airing coverage of the launch, rendezvous, docking, and hatch opening of the Soyuz MS-22 carrying NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio to the International Space Station on NASA’s Television’s Public Channel, the Artemis I demonstration test will air only on the Media Channel. During all other times, the test will air on both the Public and Media Channels.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is seen atop a mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continue, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis I flight test is the first integrated test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and supporting ground systems. Launch of the uncrewed flight test is targeted for no earlier than Aug. 29 at 8:33 a.m. ET. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
The agency also will host a media teleconference to preview the test at 11:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 19. Participants include:
Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for Common Exploration Systems Development, NASA Headquarters
Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, NASA Headquarters
Jeremy Parsons, deputy manager, Exploration Ground Systems Program, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
John Blevins, chief engineer, Space Launch System Program, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
Audio of the media call will stream live on the agency’s website at:
To participate by telephone, media must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the event to: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test. It is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to provide a foundation for human exploration in deep space and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.
Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone to send astronauts to Mars.
For updates, follow along on NASA’s Artemis blog at:
Thousands of never-before-seen young stars spotted in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, called Tarantula Nebula owing to its appearance in dusty filaments.
The nebula has long been a favorite for astronomers studying star formation and the Webb has been revealing beautiful distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust ever since it’s started capturing the deep space.
At only 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies nearest our Milky Way. It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known. Astronomers focused three of Webb’s high-resolution infrared instruments on the Tarantula. Under the lens of Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk.
The nebula’s cavity centered in the image above has been hollowed out by blistering radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which sparkle pale blue in the image. Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion by these stars’ powerful stellar winds, forming pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster. These pillars contain forming protostars, which will eventually emerge from their dusty cocoons and take their turn shaping the nebula.
Caption: Nestled in the center of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest star yet discovered, astronomers have produced the sharpest image ever of this star. Photo:Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgment
Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) caught one very young star doing precisely emerging out of the dust. Astronomers previously thought this star might be a bit older and already in the process of clearing out a bubble around itself. However, NIRSpec showed that the star was only just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around itself. Without Webb’s high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation-in-action could not have been revealed.
The region takes on a different appearance when viewed in the longer infrared wavelengths detected by Webb’s Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI). The hot stars fade, and the cooler gas and dust glow. Within the stellar nursery clouds, points of light indicate embedded protostars, still gaining mass.
While shorter wavelengths of light are absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula, and therefore never reach Webb to be detected, longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate that dust, ultimately revealing a previously unseen cosmic environment.
Caption: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
One of the reasons the Tarantula Nebula is interesting to astronomers is that the nebula has a similar type of chemical composition as the gigantic star-forming regions observed at the universe’s “cosmic noon,” when the cosmos was only a few billion years old and star formation was at its peak. Star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same furious rate as the Tarantula Nebula, and have a different chemical composition.
Caption: In this mosaic image displays the Tarantula Nebula star, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust. The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale blue./Photo:NASA
This makes the Tarantula the closest (i.e., easiest to see in detail) example of what was happening in the universe as it reached its brilliant high noon. Webb will provide astronomers the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in the Tarantula Nebula with the telescope’s deep observations of distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon.
Finding water on the Moon could be easier with a Goddard technology that uses an effect called quantum tunneling to generate a high-powered terahertz laser, filling a gap in existing laser technology.
Locating water and other resources is a NASA priority crucial to exploring Earth’s natural satellite and other objects in the solar system and beyond. Previous experiments inferred, then confirmed the existence of small amounts of water across the Moon. However, most technologies do not distinguish among water, free hydrogen ions, and hydroxyl, as the broadband detectors used cannot distinguish between the different volatiles.
Goddard engineer Dr. Berhanu Bulcha said a type of instrument called a heterodyne spectrometer could zoom in on particular frequencies to definitively identify and locate water sources on the Moon. It would need a stable, high-powered, terahertz laser, which was prototyped in collaboration with Longwave Photonics through NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
“This laser allows us to open a new window to study this frequency spectrum,” he said. “Other missions found hydration on the Moon, but that could indicate hydroxyl or water. If it’s water, where did it come from? Is it indigenous to the formation of the Moon, or did it arrive later by comet impacts? How much water is there? We need to answer these questions because water is critical for survival and can be used to make fuel for further exploration.”
As the name implies, spectrometers detect spectra or wavelengths of light in order to reveal the chemical properties of matter that light has touched. Most spectrometers tend to operate across broad sections of the spectrum. Heterodyne instruments dial in to very specific light frequencies such as infrared or terahertz. Hydrogen-containing compounds like water emit photons in the terahertz frequency range — 2 trillion to 10 trillion cycles per second — between microwave and infrared.
Like a microscope for subtle differences within a bandwidth like terahertz, heterodyne spectrometers combine a local laser source with incoming light. Measuring the difference between the laser source and the combined wavelength provides accurate readings between sub-bandwidths of the spectrum.
Traditional lasers generate light by exciting an electron within an atom’s outer shell, which then emits a single photon as it transitions, or returns to its resting energy level. Different atoms produce different frequencies of light based on the fixed amount of energy it takes to excite one electron. However, lasers fall short in a particular portion of the spectrum between infrared and microwave known as the terahertz gap.
“The problem with existing laser technology,” Dr. Bulcha said, “is that no materials have the right properties to produce a terahertz wave.”
This tiny laser capitalizes on quantum-scale effects of materials just tens of atoms across to generate a high-powered beam in a portion of the spectrum where traditional lasers fade in strength/NASA/Michael Giunto
Electromagnetic oscillators like those that generate radio or microwave frequencies produce low-powered terahertz pulses by using a series of amplifiers and frequency multipliers to extend the signal into the terahertz range. However, this process consumes a lot of voltage, and the materials used to amplify and multiply the pulse have limited efficiency. This means they lose power as they approach the terahertz frequencies.
From the other side of the terahertz gap, optical lasers pump energy into a gas to generate photons. However, high-powered, terahertz-band lasers are large, power hungry, and not suitable for space exploration purposes where mass and power are limited, particularly hand-held or Small Satellite applications. The power of the pulse also drops as optical lasers push towards the terahertz bandwidths.
To fill that gap, Dr. Bulcha’s team is developing quantum cascade lasers that produce photons from each electron transition event by taking advantage of some unique, quantum-scale physics of materials layered just a few atoms thick.
In these materials, a laser emits photons in a specific frequency determined by the thickness of alternating layers of semiconductors rather than the elements in the material. In quantum physics, the thin layers increase the chance that a photon can then tunnel through to the next layer instead of bouncing off the barrier. Once there, it excites additional photons. Using a generator material with 80 to 100 layers, totaling less than 10 to 15 microns thick, the team’s source creates a cascade of terahertz-energy photons.
This cascade consumes less voltage to generate a stable, high-powered light. One drawback of this technology is its beam spreads out in a large angle, dissipating quickly over short distances. Using innovative technology supported by Goddard’s Internal Research and Development (IRAD) funding, Dr. Bulcha and his team integrated the laser on a waveguide with a thin optical antenna to tighten the beam. The integrated laser and waveguide unit reduces this dissipation by 50% in a package smaller than a quarter.
He hopes to continue the work to make a flight-ready laser for NASA’s Artemis program.
The laser’s low size and power consumption allow it to fit in a 1U CubeSat, about the size of a teapot, along with the spectrometer hardware, processor, and power supply. It could also power a handheld device for use by future explorers on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
