(Daily News Scan - DNS English) Methane on Mars
Important Points:
Curiosity rover launched on the 26th of November 2011, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has found the largest amount of methane on the red planet, Mars. NASA is an independent federal agency of the United States in charge of U.S. science and technology.
Our DNS will today highlight the key findings of the rover and the dilemma related to it. It will also tell about the Mangalyaan which is orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014.
Methane has been detected by the curiosity team many times over the course of the current program. But this time level of methane reported by the TLS is much high than before. TLS is the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, one of the instruments in the SAM which measures concentrations of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor in the atmosphere of Mars. TLS is installed inside the laboratory suite SAM i.e. Sample Analysis at Mars. Sam is the instrument suite which analyses organics and gases from the atmosphere and solid samples at Mars.
Curiosity rover is part of NASA’s Science Laboratory mission. It is designed in car shape. It was launched on 26 November 2011 and landed on Mars in August 2012. Though the planned lifespan of curiosity rover was 687 days but it was extended to indefinite in December 2012 and is still in operation.
The news is catching a big hike because, of all the planets in the solar system other than earth, Mars has the greatest potential for life. It resembles earth in its formation, water reservoirs, climate history, volcanoes, and other geologic processes. And thus it gives a possibility of life on Mars too.
Though SAM detected the level of methane on Mars there is no instrument that can detect the reason behind the creation of methane on Mars. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus has a large amount of methane present in their atmosphere and the source of its creation is chemical processing of primordial solar nebula material. Primordial nebulas are the clouds of dust and gas.
The presence of methane on earth is 90 to 95 percent and has biological origin. Grass eating animals such as cow, goat, yak gives out one-fifth of the annual global methane release.
Methane on Mars can also be created through interactions of rock and water, or by gale crater. Gale crater formed when a meteor hit mars about 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. It is difficult to identify if the source of methane is biological or geological or even if it is modern or ancient.
Previous researches have shown how the level of methane rise and fall and scientists also doubt how long methane may last. Scientists involved in the Curiosity mission need time to study these clues.
Three years after the Curiosity rover was sent, India launched Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or “Mangalyaan”. Mangalyaan is a spacecraft orbiting Mars since 2014. It was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on 5 November 2013. It was the fourth agency after ROSCOSMOS, NASA and EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY to reach Mars. India was the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit in its first attempt.
The mission is a technology demonstrator to design, plan, manage and operate the interplanetary missions. The spacecraft is currently controlled by the Space Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru with support from Indian Deep Space Network.
One of the five payloads on MOM is Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM) which is designed to measure methane in the Martian atmosphere. Though MSM has not detected any methane but has provided excellent reflectance data of the Mars surface.
