Posted on 06/25/2024 5:40:16 AM PDT by Red Badger
A rock core in a sample tube, with Martian atmosphere in its “headspace.”
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
The Perseverance rover has been toiling on the Martian surface for over three years, collecting rock samples that will eventually be brought to Earth if all goes according to plan. But the rover has also picked up hitchhikers, in the form of traces of Martian atmosphere that are squeezed into the “headspace” of the sample tubes.
That’s very exciting for atmospheric scientists, who so far have only studied Mars’ air remotely, whether from orbiters characterizing the planet from on high or from rovers delivering readouts to experts on Earth. Should this all work, it’ll be an incredible bonus for these scientists to analyze Martian rocks in Earth-based labs.
But forget the rock samples, the material stuff that planetary scientists hope will explain Mars’ evolution, and which astrobiologists hope will contain hints of ancient life on the fourth planet from the Sun.
“People think of the Moon as airless, but it has a very tenuous atmosphere that interacts with the lunar surface rocks over time,” said Just Simon, a geochemist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in a NASA release. “That includes noble gases leaking out of the Moon’s interior and collecting at the lunar surface.”
The team will apply insights gained from the 2021 study of the Moon’s very thin atmosphere, which was based on samples brought back by the Apollo 17 mission. The team put the gas in a cold trap; by reducing the temperature in a sealed container, the team was able to capture some gas in the sample at the bottom of the trap. The same rules would apply to any interrogate of Martian atmosphere held in the headspace of the rock cores’ sample tubes.
The Martian air will give researchers the chance to understand how Martian dust filters through the planet’s air, which sometimes whips up into Martian dust devils—one of which ran right over Perseverance in 2022. The air samples could also reveal how much water vapor lies just above the planet’s surface. That in turn could reveal aspects of Mars’ water cycle—a system that persists through the regular cycles of Martian frosts and thaws, though no liquid water is known to exist on the planet’s surface.
Mars’ air has recently been a great venue for exploration. For nearly three years, the intrepid Ingenuity helicopter flew in Mars’ skies, the first craft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet.
But there’s one big problem keeping NASA scientists from exploring the samples of Mars’ surface and skies: the cost. The Mars Sample Return mission is an expensive one—first capped at $7 billion, and now estimated at about $11 billion—leading to delays in the mission timeline. In April, NASA asked industry players to come up with ideas to make the mission feasible. At this point, Perseverance has collected over two dozen rock samples, chosen for their potential to reveal aspects of the planet’s geochemistry, geological history, and other aspects of its makeup and evolution.
At this point, using instruments capture, recover, and decipher the makeup of another planet’s skies seems like the easy part. The hard part is actually funding such an endeavor.
Since R-12 refrigerant (well... any refrigerant really) is heavier than air, how does it get up into the stratosphere and supposedly destroy the ozone layer?
Inquiring minds want too know.
A bonus hitchhiker?
Ford Prefect?
Zaphod Beeblebrox?
Don’t Panic!
CC
I have my Slim Whitman records ready, just in case.
Easy. Climate change, silly.
Because it’s far away and has a very thin atmosphere? I know you’re trying to help, but understanding the science so poorly just sorta makes us look silly.
If the ozone layer is so thin and fragile, what does a rocket blasting out of our atmosphere with tremendous pressure and heat do to it?
Is that Martian ‘brown stuff’ in that picture?
The moon is made of cheese but Mars is totally ‘brown stuff’.
Non wonder Mars has no Martians anymore; the brown stuff was too toxic.
Shades of “Andromeda Strain”.
Andromeda Strain?
Triffids?
The latest Chuck Berry release?
See.... more questions. It’s prolly the sonic booms that rattle around the O3 molecules weakening the covalent bonds thereby causing ozone holes.
The same thing a straight pin would do to a blue whale if it poked it.
The early scientific view of Mars atmosphere was that something went wrong in the past and it was once more favorable to abundent water and life.
That is partially right but not totally.
The first thing is that an atmosphere does not just hang around because it wants to, something must help it kling to the planet, and the main something is gravity. Martian gravity is slightly over 1/3 of Earth’s.
The second thing is the atmosphere can be broken down by the high energy particle of the sun. One thing that can protect the atmosphere is a strong magnetic field, like Earth has and Mars does not.
Current science believes Mars once had a strong magnetic field, but the internal dynamo that created that field shut down about a very long time ago.
With very weak gravity and a very weak planetary magnetosphere, a robust atmosphere with plenty of water had but a fleeting moment in time on Mars.
And you thought gold was a good investment! /s
So, certain death. Whales do deep dives with intense pressures and they would implode due to the pinhole just like the Titanic submersible.
Sure. Have fun.
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