Curiosity Rover may sit on methane producing microbes

Scientists want to look for all life forms on the surface of Mars. The consensus is that sometime in the past, Mars may be friendly to life some kind. Some also believe that Mars can now accommodate microbial life and point to increased methane levels seen in several regions as evidence.

An interesting thing has happened with Curiosity Rover because of exploring Gale Crater. Because it landed on Mars in 2012, curiosity had used an instrument called a tunable laser spectrometer to measure the amount of methane around it. On Mars, the methane background rate of around 0.41 parts per billion has been constant.

NASA has recorded six separate occasions where the number of methane around curiosity has increased significantly. However, in most of these occasions, NASA could not track increased methane to the source. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology model methane gas particles by dividing them into discrete packages to track methane to the source.

They take into account the speed of wind and direction at the time of detection and tracing the Metane Parcel back to their possible emission points. This study allows scientists to triangulation areas that are most likely to be a source of methane and find that one is a few dozen miles of curiosity. Scientists say their findings point to the emission area to the west and southwestern curiosity on the northwest floor.

Scientists are passionate about the discovery because, on earth, almost all methane has biological origin. Finding the source of methane on Mars can mean finding extraterrestrial life for the first time. Even if methane is the result of non-biological processes, it can be attributed to geological activities related to the existence of liquid water. Curiosity is closer to finding the source of methane production, but the researchers still do not know if the life of producing methane.