2024-04-22 16:49:09
Archive – NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars – NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS – Archive
MADRID, 22 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Methane keeps Mars scientists busy with tests and models on Earth that aim to explain why the gas behaves strangely and is only detected in Gale Crater.
A NASA research group recently shared an interesting proposal. In an article published in March in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the group suggested that methane, no matter how it is produced, could be sealed under solidified salt that could form in Martian regolith, which is a “soil” made of broken rock and dust. When the temperature increases during the warmer seasons or hours of the day, weakening the seal, methane could leak.
Led by Alexander Pavlov, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the researchers suggest that the gas may also explode in puffs when seals they break under the pressure of, say, a vehicle the size of a small SUV passing over itcase of the Curiosity rover.
The team’s hypothesis may help explain why methane is detected only in Gale Crater, Pavlov said. it’s a statement, since it is one of the two places on Mars where a robot roams and drills the surface. The other is Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Perseverance rover is working, although that rover does not have a methane detection instrument.
Pavlov traces the origin of this hypothesis to an unrelated experiment he led in 2017, which involved growing microorganisms in a simulated Martian permafrost (frozen soil) infused with salt, as is much of the Martian permafrost.
Pavlov and his colleagues tested whether bacteria known as halophiles, which live in saltwater lakes and other salt-rich environments on Earth, could thrive in similar conditions on Mars.
The microbial growth results were inconclusive, he said, but the researchers noticed something unexpected: The top layer of soil formed a crust of salt as the salty ice sublimated, going from solid to gas and leaving the salt behind.
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