Leak in Mars Rover Curiosity's Wet Chemistry Test Finds Organics

An unexpected leak of a chemical designed to tag complex organic molecules in samples collected by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity appears to have serendipitously done its job, scientists reported on Tuesday (March 17).

The nuclear-powered mobile science laboratory Curiosity is to rove across the surface of Mars for years, searching for the conditions that may have once made Mars an abode of life.
The nuclear-powered mobile science laboratory Curiosity is roving across the surface of Mars for years, searching for the conditions that may have once made Mars an abode of life. See how NASA's Mars rover Curiosity works in this Space.com

Curiosity's onboard laboratory includes seven so-called "wet chemistry" experiments designed to preserve and identify suspect carbon-containing components in samples drilled out from rocks.

Samples drilled out from Yellowknife Bay were stored inside the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM instrument, as the rover made its way over the next two years to Mount Sharp, a three-mile high mound of sediments rising from the floor of Gale Crater.

"These samples were just reacting with this MTBSTFA vapor, reacting with all that good organic stuff. That turned out to be a good thing," Glavin said.

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Scientists figured out how to extract the enriched vapor, collect it and analyze it in a way that preserved the organics.

In addition to analyzing the doggy-bagged sample that had been reacting with the MTBSTFA vapors for two years, scientists also were able to compare the results with residue from a sample that had been heated twice, effectively killing off any volatiles, but which also had been exposed to the vapors for two years.

Initial results show indigenous Mars complex organics in the fresh sample, though more work is needed to definitely peg the compounds.