Is life really possible in Mars? Curiosity Rover might have stumbled to the answer.
Curiosity Rover has been set off for a mission and that mission had an interesting development after the robot discovered Methane on Mars.
NASA scientists have reported that Mars Curiosity Rover has detected a 10-fold spike in methane gas and discovered organic material that might support the idea that life has once existed three billion years ago, according to ABC News. The robot has constantly monitored very low-level amounts of Methane in the background. There were also a couple of short-lived spikes that are 10 times higher. The report of the discovery has been made at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
Since 95% of Methane comes from microbial organism here on Earth, the appearance of the gas on Mars creates a possibility that life has once been present in the planet.
One of the scientists in the Curiosity team, Sushil Atreya, mentioned the possible existence of so-called "clathrates."
"These are molecular cages of water-ice in which methane gas is trapped," the University of Michigan professor told BBC News. "From time to time, these could be destabilised, perhaps by some mechanical or thermal stress, and the methane gas would be released to find its way up through cracks or fissures in the rock to enter the atmosphere."
Although a significant amount of methane has been found on Mars, it isn't a sure indication that there have been past or present life in the planet since geological processes are also capable of producing the gas.
"Right now, it's too much of a single-point measurement for us really to jump to any conclusions," Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland said. "So all we can really do is lay out the possibilities. And we certainly should have an open mind. Maybe there are microbes on Mars cranking out methane, but we sure can't say that with any certainty. It's just speculation at this point."
Mahaffy is one of the authors of the new methane study, The Christian Science Monitor reported.
Curiosity Rover landed on Mars on Aug. 6 in the year 2012 with a mission to investigate the Martian environment. Upon its landing, the robot has discovered that the Red Planet had the right chemical composition and environmental conditions to support microbial life, according to Yahoo! News. The methane detections were considered a "big surprise" by the team.
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