NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.
The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument,
NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab,
and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the
carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.
SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil
sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument
recently.
"This data is gonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It's looking really good."
The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for
several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and
double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that
the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity
rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, kicking off a
two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of
supporting microbial life.
In addition to analyzing soil samples, SAM also takes the measure of
Red Planet air. Many scientists are keen to see if Curiosity detects any
methane, which is produced by many lifeforms here on Earth. A SAM
analysis of Curiosity's first few sniffs found no definitive trace of the gas in the Martian atmosphere, but the rover will keep looking.
Curiosity began driving again Friday (Nov. 16) after spending six weeks
testing its soil-scooping gear at a site called "Rocknest." The rover
will soon try out its rock-boring drill for the first time on the Red
Planet, scientists have said.
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