Following the measurements of NASA's Curiosity rover, the newly arrived European spacecraft Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will scan atmospheric methane, which is considered to be a strong indicator of life on Earth.
Researchers have many questions about Mars, which is most similar to the Earth within the solar system. But some of them relate to why atmospheric methane levels rarely “break” and how gas has time to dissipate so quickly.
More methane on Earth is reproduced by living organisms, although a small amount is produced by geological interaction of the rock with hot water. Scientists do not know how methane appears on Mars, but they are going to spend the next 10 years compiling detailed maps of the sites of frequent gas formation.
The data will come from the newly arrived TGO, which began testing scientific equipment this week. TGO will take a year to send circulars into orbit and move to the circumpolar slope, which is considered ideal for displaying a mission (mapping). “I believe that the device will play a major role in expanding our knowledge of what is happening here,” said NASA senior researcher Michael Mamma from the Goddart Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
In 2003, Mamma led a team that made the first final measurements of methane on the Red Planet with a telescope in Hawaii. Methane appeared in the clouds (plumes) over specific regions and reached a maximum density of about 60 parts per billion.
Additional information arrived a year later, although methane had already appeared on another part of the planet. In 2006, Mumma and his colleagues scanned the location of the original plume and, to their surprise, discovered that methane had disappeared, suggesting that a seasonal phenomenon was in progress.
The disappearance of methane revealed another mystery: computer models show that methane on Mars must survive for about 300 years before ultraviolet light from the sun destroys the molecules. Instead, the analysis showed that the train only disappeared for several months or even weeks. NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover began tracking methane after its arrival in August 2012. He also found a big surge during the autumn season in the southern hemisphere, but this process did not repeat next year. Since then, scientists have suggested that they detect seasonal fluctuations in background methane levels. This was announced by Ashvin Wasavada, a leading researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. These studies are still ongoing.
With the tools of greater sensitivity, TGO will create a methane map of the planet on a global scale.
If you're lucky, TGO will even manage to make related measurements of carbon and hydrogen isotopes, so scientists can compare the chemical composition of methane Mars with the terrestrial analogue. This will provide more clues to what is the source of methane: biology or geology.
