NASA excited about something Curiosity found on Mars

[Guardsman Bass]

Curiosity is living up to its name. The NASA rover currently wheeling itself around Mars has apparently sent back some very interesting data from the Red Planet in the form of a soil sample that shows ... well, something. From the sounds of it, something big. But for now at least, that's all anyone is willing to say.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena are keeping their lips sealed for the time being while they run additional tests to make sure the discovery holds up. That, however, hasn't stopped one of the mission's leaders from speculating loudly that it'll be one that rewrites at least some of what we know about the universe.

"This data is gonna be one for the history books," John Grotzinger, the rover mission's principal investigator, told NPR last week for a the buzz-inciting segment that aired today. "It's looking really good."

What we do know is that the data comes from a soil sample analyzed by the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, an on-board lab known as SAM, so if the data holds up to further testing it appears possible, and perhaps likely, that it is a discovery of an element on Mars previously thought not to exist on the Red Planet.

Of course, the reason that NASA is keeping the potential find (mostly) under wraps is because it may turn out to be nothing but a false alarm, something that's happened before to the mission. NPR explains:

So why doesn't Grotzinger want to share his exciting news? The main reason is caution. Grotzinger and his team were almost stung once before. When SAM analyzed an air sample, it looked like there was methane in it, and at least here on Earth, some methane comes from living organisms. But Grotzinger says they held up announcing the finding because they wanted to be sure they were measuring Martian air, and not air brought along from the rover's launchpad at Cape Canaveral.

"We knew from the very beginning that we had this risk of having brought air from Florida. And we needed to diminish it and then make the measurement again," he says. And when they made the measurement again, the signs of methane disappeared.

But the simple fact Grotzinger is willing to talk so openly (and excitedly) about the possible discovery in light of the past let downs would seem to suggest he has a good deal of confidence that it will hold up to further testing.

No word on exactly how long it will take before we learn more, but Grotzinger told NPR that it will likely take "several weeks" before he and his team are ready to go public. Until then, feel free to take to the comments with your best (or worst) guesses.

I'm a little skeptical at this point. I'd love for this to be something like "NASA finds very strong proof of micro-organism activity in Martian soil", but NASA has a history of doing these huge build-ups for stuff that, while quite interesting, aren't exactly ground-shaking scientific discoveries. Remember the huge build-up over what turned out to be some scientists getting bacteria to use arsenic in their biology a while back?

[madd0ct0r]

oooh. goosebumps. mostly cos I'm sitting in a draught but goddamit, I'd like some good, big news this week.

[Dave]

I'm a little skeptical at this point. I'd love for this to be something like "NASA finds very strong proof of micro-organism activity in Martian soil", but NASA has a history of doing these huge build-ups for stuff that, while quite interesting, aren't exactly ground-shaking scientific discoveries. Remember the huge build-up over what turned out to be some scientists getting bacteria to use arsenic in their biology a while back?

As I recall there were a few negative results in the followup studies on the arsenic-based life claim.

Anyways, best guess (as a layman) I've seen is some mineral that only forms on the bottom of oceans.

[ArmorPierce]

I'm a little skeptical at this point. I'd love for this to be something like "NASA finds very strong proof of micro-organism activity in Martian soil", but NASA has a history of doing these huge build-ups for stuff that, while quite interesting, aren't exactly ground-shaking scientific discoveries. Remember the huge build-up over what turned out to be some scientists getting bacteria to use arsenic in their biology a while back?

As I recall there were a few negative results in the followup studies on the arsenic-based life claim.

Anyways, best guess (as a layman) I've seen is some mineral that only forms on the bottom of oceans.

That would be boring, it would just be more evidence of stuff we already have evidence of. If they are making a big thing about that I will be thoroughly disappointed.

[NoXion]

Why don't they just not say anything until they are more certain?

[PainRack]

Funding. That and NASA has become very good PR with that whole Curiousity video

[Dave]

Funding. That and NASA has become very good PR with that whole Curiousity video

Or maybe we could say that JPL or Curiosity's PR team is good. I have yet to see the rest of NASA's PR effort improve.

[Guardsman Bass]

Why don't they just not say anything until they are more certain?

They mostly haven't. The only outlets reporting on this so far are NPR and Slate.

Presumably it's not that they've found methane, since there was a NYT blurb a while back saying that Curiosity had not found methane in the soil. Then again, that was November 2nd, so maybe things have changed since then.

[ryacko]

So that's where my car keys are.



So they want to create hype, without the backlash for being wrong.

[Guardsman Bass]

It looks like JPL is walking that statement back:

The Huffington Post, which is never quite so happy as when it’s hyperventilating, went big with a story today about a pending December announcement from the Curiosity Mars rover’s science team. “This data is gonna be one for the history books,” HuffPo accurately quoted Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), telling NPR. “It’s looking really good.”

Hard to overplay a teaser quote like that from one of NASA’s usually reserved scientists, and on the surface it does sound potentially huge. What Grotzinger was talking about was a possible finding made by the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which is essentially a tiny onboard laboratory in which samples of soil and air are broken down for their constituent chemicals. One of the first things Curiosity is looking for in these early stages of the mission — and will continue looking for throughout — is methane, a powerful marker of biology on Earth and likely on Mars too, assuming life exists there.

(MORE: Rover Photos, from the Surface of Mars)

But as NPR reported in detail but HuffPo didn’t, Grotzinger and his team were nearly tripped up earlier in the mission when SAM’s sniffers indeed seemed to detect a signature whiff of methane. That set off a lot of buzzing within NASA, but the team stayed mum until they could confirm the find — and it was a good thing they did.

“We knew from the very beginning that we had this risk of having brought air from Florida,” Grotzinger told NPR. “And we needed to diminish it and then make the measurement again.”

They made that correction, and the sensational data evaporated. And even if few members of the Curiosity team were around in 1996, when NASA convened a sudden, almost unheard of midday press conference to announce that they had found bacterial fossils in a Martian meteorite — only to have to walk back from the finding in the months that followed — there is enough institutional PTSD left over from that experience that nobody wants to make the same mistake again.

What’s more, even when a NASA scientist finds something that truly qualifies for the history books, there’s a difference between what’s historic for scientists and for the rest of us. The discovery of hematites, salt and other by-products of water on the Martian surface by earlier rovers had champagne corks popping and people high-fiving at JPL. You ever get excited about a hematite? No, and few other nonscientists would either — even though the finding was a critical link in the evidentiary chain that would establish the existence of Martian life.

(MORE: Mars Through the Decades — 40 Years of Exploring the Red Planet)

JPL spokesman Guy Webster made just this point today in an e-mail to TIME: “As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books,” he wrote. That’s not to say he rules out the possibility of truly big news. “It won’t be earthshaking,” he said in a later phone call, “but it will be interesting.”

And as for the scoop the NPR reporter and HuffPo announced? “John was excited about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John’s office last week,” Webster wrote. “He has been similarly excited by results at other points during the mission so far.”

So, probably nothing too exciting. Likely another indicator that Mars had water there, or maybe some organic compounds.

[Atlan]

They've found the Void Dragon. They're just afraid to tell anyone.

[Guardsman Bass]

It looks like it may be nothing special after all.

When Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger sat down with NPR on Nov. 13, it was to discuss the rover’s mission on Mars. But when the interview aired last week, it was just one quote on soil samples that made headlines: “This data is gonna be one for the history books.”

It didn’t take long for Twitter, Facebook and even other news organizations to pick up the quote. Similar to a childhood game of “Telephone,” that statement ballooned into one of the week’s biggest stories: After just a few months on Mars, the Curiosity rover had made, in the NPR reporter’s words, an “earth-shaking” discovery. One so big that NASA had to quadruple-check the results.

That rumor, however, isn’t exactly accurate.

The quote heard around the world came shortly after Grotzinger explained that NASA had just received the initial data from Curiosity’s first soil experiment using a new Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which is capable of identifying organic compounds.

Naturally, the public assumed that this meant Curiosity had discovered a complex organic molecule. But while NASA does have the latest soil samples, the mission team tells Mashable that researchers haven’t determined that particular groundbreaking discovery. In fact the rover drove away from the location just five days later, taking more samples along the way.

What Grotzinger was actually trying to convey is that Curiosity’s data over her entire two-year mission will further our knowledge of Mars more than ever before, making it a historical mission. This is entirely factual. In her short time on the Red Planet, Curiosity has already made significant discoveries — like finding an ancient streambed where water once flowed. More recently, she determined that astronauts could survive Mars radiation levels.

. . . .

That sucks.

[Simon_Jester]

What, that Mars's radiation environment is livable?

[Guardsman Bass]

"Livable" is a strong word. It just means we need less radiation shielding than we thought we would, for a hypothetical manned Mars mission (or colony attempt).

[Guardsman Bass]

And now JPL has officially nixed any news about there being organics in what Curiosity sifted through-

PASADENA, Calif. -- The next news conference about the NASA Mars rover Curiosity will be held at 9 a.m. Monday, Dec. 3, in San Francisco at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect. The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil. One class of substances Curiosity is checking for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life. At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics.

The Mars Science Laboratory Project and its Curiosity rover are less than four months into a two-year prime mission to investigate whether conditions in Mars' Gale Crater may have been favorable for microbial life. Curiosity is exceeding all expectations for a new mission with all of the instruments and measurement systems performing well. This is spectacular for such a complex system, and one that is operated so far away on Mars by people here on planet Earth. The mission already has found an ancient riverbed on the Red Planet, and there is every expectation for remarkable discoveries still to come.