The road to Mars is busy these days

Three rockets are currently heading to Mars.

NASA has been landing probes on Mars for decades. But I was a little
underwhelmed by its probes since the Viking missions in the mid 70's.
The Viking missions were looking for signs of life, they weren't up to
the task, but they were trying. But since then, NASA was kind of always
looking to side issues. Looking for signs of water or what not. Those
missions were interesting, but to me, signs of past or present life is a
much more interesting topic.

This time NASA is finally looking for signs of life again. But this
time, they have competition. The Chinese Tianwen is also on its way to
Mars, and also with the objective of finding signs of life. So after
nearly 50 years of waiting for a mission to set out for what the Viking
missions were trying to do, I am now finally getting two competing
missions. Interesting times.


Alain Fournier

Le 30/07/2020 Ã* 22:46, Alain Fournier a écritÂ*:
Three rockets are currently heading to Mars.

NASA has been landing probes on Mars for decades. But I was a little
underwhelmed by its probes since the Viking missions in the mid 70's.
The Viking missions were looking for signs of life, they weren't up to
the task, but they were trying. But since then, NASA was kind of always
looking to side issues. Looking for signs of water or what not. Those
missions were interesting, but to me, signs of past or present life is a
much more interesting topic.

This time NASA is finally looking for signs of life again. But this
time, they have competition. The Chinese Tianwen is also on its way to
Mars, and also with the objective of finding signs of life. So after
nearly 50 years of waiting for a mission to set out for what the Viking
missions were trying to do, I am now finally getting two competing
missions. Interesting times.


Alain Fournier

NASA has discovered life in Mars several times. The vikings did it, when
in 1978 an engineer noticed that a rock on face of the lander changed
colors and measured the spectra of the "greenish" stuff. It matched the
spectra of lichens.

(Source: Color and Feature Changes at Mars Viking Lander Site by GILBERT
V. LEVIN AND PATRICIA ANN STRAAT. J. Theor. Biol. (1978) 75, 381-390)

After NASA forgot that, The Opportunity rover rediscovered it again when
the "blue berries" were all around the floor in Mars. NASA pushed
without any evidence that they were just ferrous concretions, and
ordered the rover to move on, ignoring that obvious BIOLOGICAL features
of those "berries"... They point all in the same direction, they have
long cilindrical features that connect the upper part to the ground,
just like several species here on earth.

Details in:
Life on Mars: Colonies of Photosynthesizing Mushrooms in Eagle Crater?
The Hematite Hypothesis Refuted.
Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, Rudolph E. Schild, Giora J. Kidron et al.
Astrobiology · April 2020

After forgetting the berries, Curiosity rediscovered life in Mars again
further down the road.
Ancient Sedimentary Structures in the 3.7 Ga Gillespie Lake Member,
Mars, That Resemble Macroscopic Morphology, Spatial Associations, and
Temporal Succession in Terrestrial Microbialites.
Astrobiology February 2015, Vol. 15, No. 2: 169-192

I cite from the abstract of that article above:
Sandstone beds of the 3.7 Ga Gillespie Lake Member on Mars have been
interpreted as evidence of an ancient playa lake environment. On Earth,
such environments have been sites of colonization by microbial mats from
the early Archean to the present time. Terrestrial microbial mats in
playa lake environments form microbialites known as microbially induced
sedimentary structures (MISS). On Mars, three lithofacies of the
Gillespie Lake Member sandstone display centimeter- to meter-scale
structures similar in macroscopic morphology to terrestrial MISS that
include “erosional remnants and pockets,� “mat chips,� “roll-ups,�
“desiccation cracks,� and “gas domes.� The microbially induced
sedimentary-like structures identified in Curiosity rover mission images
do not have a random distribution.

NASA ignored that, and continued roving, because, as everybody knows,
moving the rover around is the most crucial part of the mission.

But, JPL still has some people... and published:
NASA Rover Finds Active and Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4413

I quote from that article:
NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an
organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic
molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's
drill.

Did that discovery prompte NASA rover's drivers to HALT AND LOOK FURTHER
INTO THAT?

Nope. They just went on roving around.


And now they send YET ANOTHER MACHINE WITH NO MICROSCOPE!

Perseverance will persevere in avoiding discovering any trace of life in
Mars and will ignore all the results of its instruments. They send now:
o A camera (like all the other rovers. The camera is for looking at
landscapes. Microscopic bacteria will go unnoticed)

o Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA)
A set of sensors that will provide measurements of temperature, wind
speed and direction, pressure, relative humidity and dust size and
shape. Nothing life related

o Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE)
An exploration technology investigation that will produce oxygen from
Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide. Nothing life related

o Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL)
An X-ray fluorescence spectrometer that will also contain an imager with
high resolution to determine the fine scale elemental composition of
Martian surface materials. PIXL will provide capabilities that permit
more detailed detection and analysis of chemical elements than ever
before. A new analyzer of ROCKS!

o Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX)
A ground-penetrating radar that will provide centimeter-scale resolution
of the geologic structure of the subsurface. Nothing that will detect
BACTERIA!

o Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics
& Chemicals (SHERLOC)
A spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and uses an
ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect
organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer to
fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements
with other instruments in the payload. OK that COULD give some
interesting results, but not so much as a humble MICROSCOPE DAMM IT!

o SuperCam
An instrument that can provide imaging, chemical composition analysis,
and mineralogy. The instrument will also be able to detect the presence
of organic compounds in rocks and regolith from a distance. This
instrument also has a significant contribution from the Centre National
d'Etudes Spatiales,Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et
Planétologie (CNES/IRAP) France. That could be useful too, if they use
it, but I am skeptic about NASA...

Do they want to find life there?

On 2020-08-01 23:47, jacob navia wrote:


[snip]

And now they send YET ANOTHER MACHINE WITH NO MICROSCOPE!

Perseverance will persevere in avoiding discovering any trace of life in
Mars and will ignore all the results of its instruments. They send now:


[snip]

o Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics
& Chemicals (SHERLOC)
A spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and uses an
ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect
organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer to
fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements
with other instruments in the payload. OK that COULD give some
interesting results, but not so much as a humble MICROSCOPE DAMM IT!


According to Wikipedia, the SHERLOC context imager has a resolution of
better than 30 micrometers. Not quite a microscope, depending on your
definition of such instruments. Chemical and mineral composition
measurements have a resolution better than 100 micrometers.

Terrestrial bacteria are typically a few micrometers in size, so SHERLOC
would not resolve single cells, but could detect clumps of some hundreds
of cells by their composition.

--
Niklas Holsti
niklas holsti tidorum fi
. @ .