Latest news with #BenjaminTutolo
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A NASA rover just exposed something on Mars that eluded orbiters
A NASA rover taking rock samples on Mars has uncovered a plentiful mineral that was invisible to orbiters studying the Red Planet from space. Scientists say the discovery of siderite, a type of iron carbonate, could be crucial evidence to support the theory that Mars once had a thick carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, allowing a warm enough environment to support oceans, lakes, and streams. Curiosity, a car-sized lab on six wheels, performed a chemical analysis of four rock samples drilled at different elevations of Mount Sharp, a mountain it has been exploring within Gale Crater. Three of the samples showed considerable amounts of siderite. Another sample, which had no significant traces of siderite, contained other iron-rich minerals that can form as siderite breaks down. This iron carbonate mineral is known to form on Earth under specific chemical conditions involving water, iron, and carbon dioxide. The study, published in the journal Science, suggests more carbon is stored in the Martian crust than previously thought. And if similar carbonates exist in other sulfate-rich regions, they could represent a hidden trove of Mars' ancient atmosphere. "The discovery of abundant siderite in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars," said Benjamin Tutolo, lead author of the paper, in a statement. SEE ALSO: These scientists think alien life best explains what Webb just found NASA's Curiosity rover snaps a selfie image on lower Mount Sharp in Gale crater in August 2015. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS The results contribute to mounting evidence that ancient Mars had the right chemical and environmental conditions not only to have liquid water but also to trap and cycle carbon in the air — factors that may speak to the planet's past habitability. Scientists have had a long-standing theory that Mars used to have surface water. But for that to happen, the planet also would have needed to be warmer, with higher air pressure. That has led them to believe that though Mars' atmosphere is extremely thin today, it must have been thick and carbon dioxide-rich in the past. Volcanoes could have released large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Over time, some of that gas escaped into space, but enough probably stayed to support lakes and rivers. Over the past three decades, researchers have found lots of evidence that water flowed on ancient Mars. But up until now there's been a missing puzzle piece for the atmosphere within the rock record: Carbon dioxide in the air and water almost certainly would have reacted with rocks to create various carbonate minerals, so where are they? At a Martian site nicknamed Ubajara, NASA's Curiosity rover discovers siderite, an iron carbonate mineral that might solve a mystery about how the planet lost its thicker atmosphere. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS After drilling less than 2 inches below the surface, Curiosity used its CheMin instrument to conduct X-ray diffraction analyses of rock and soil samples, according to the new paper. The presence of siderite in them means the rocks likely formed in calm water like lakebeds, not volcanoes or lava. On Earth, siderate tends to form in shallow lakes and swamps. Curiosity also detected sulfates, minerals that form when water evaporates. Geologists glean clues about a planet's past from the order in which minerals formed. That siderite came first in the sequence suggests a gradual drying of ancient Martian lakes, leaving behind these other minerals. The sample that didn't have siderite but had evidence of its breakdown materials supports the notion that Mars' carbon cycle used to be active but became unbalanced over time. "Drilling through the layered Martian surface is like going through a history book," said Thomas Bristow, a NASA research scientist and co-author of the paper. "Just a few centimeters down gives us a good idea of the minerals that formed at or close to the surface around 3.5 billion years ago." If similar carbonates are found in other sulfate-rich layers across Mars, they could hold large amounts of carbon — perhaps equal to or even more than the carbon dioxide in Mars' air today. Future observations could confirm these findings and illuminate how the planet changed as it lost its atmosphere.
Yomiuri Shimbun
16-05-2025
- Science
- Yomiuri Shimbun
NASA Rover Finds Fresh Evidence of Warm, Wet past of Mars
NASA / Handout via Reuters, file A 'self-portrait' of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle on Vera Rubin Ridge on the planet Mars, according to NASA, in this photo mosaic assembled from dozens of images taken and released in January 2018. WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A mineral called siderite found abundantly in rock drilled by a NASA rover on the surface of Mars is providing fresh evidence of the planet's warmer and wetter ancient past when it boasted substantial bodies of water and potentially harbored life. The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 to explore whether Earth's planetary neighbor was ever able to support microbial life, found the mineral in rock samples drilled at three locations in 2022 and 2023 inside Gale crater, a large impact basin with a mountain in the middle. Siderite is an iron carbonate mineral. Its presence in sedimentary rocks formed billions of years ago offers evidence that Mars once had a dense atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, a gas that would have warmed the planet through the greenhouse effect to the point that it could sustain bodies of liquid water on its surface. There are features on the Martian landscape that many scientists have interpreted as signs that liquid water once flowed across its surface, with potential oceans, lakes and rivers considered as possible habitats for past microbial life. Carbon dioxide is the main climate-regulating greenhouse gas on Earth, as it is on Mars and Venus. Its presence in the atmosphere traps heat from the sun, warming the climate. Until now, evidence indicating the Martian atmosphere previously was rich in carbon dioxide has been sparse. The hypothesis is that when the atmosphere — for reasons not fully understood — evolved from thick and rich in carbon dioxide to thin and starved of this gas, the carbon through geochemical processes became entombed in rocks in the planet's crust as a carbonate mineral. The samples obtained by Curiosity, which drills 3 to 4 centimeters down into rock to study its chemical and mineral composition, lend weight to this notion. The samples contained up to 10.5% siderite by weight, as determined by an instrument onboard the car-sized, six-wheeled rover. 'One of the longstanding mysteries in the study of Martian planetary evolution and habitability is: If large amounts of carbon dioxide were required to warm the planet and stabilize liquid water, why are there so few detections of carbonate minerals on the Martian surface?' said University of Calgary geochemist Benjamin Tutolo, a participating scientist on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover team and lead author of the study published on April 17 in the journal Science. 'Models predict that carbonate minerals should be widespread. But, to date, rover-based investigations and satellite-based orbital surveys of the Martian surface had found little evidence of their presence,' Tutolo added. Because rock similar to that sampled by the rover has been identified globally on Mars, the researchers suspect it too contains an abundance of carbonate minerals and may hold a substantial portion of the carbon dioxide that once warmed Mars. The Gale crater sedimentary rocks — sandstones and mudstones — are thought to have been deposited around 3.5 billion years ago, when this was the site of a lake and before the Martian climate underwent a dramatic change. 'The shift of Mars' surface from more habitable in the past, to apparently sterile today, is the largest-known environmental catastrophe,' said planetary scientist and study coauthor Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago and Astera Institute. 'We do not know the cause of this change, but Mars has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere today, and there is evidence that the atmosphere was thicker in the past. This puts a premium on understanding where the carbon went, so discovering a major unsuspected deposit of carbon-rich materials is an important new clue,' Kite added. The rover's findings offer insight into the carbon cycle on ancient Mars. On Earth, volcanoes spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the gas is absorbed by surface waters — mainly the ocean — and combines with elements such as calcium to form limestone rock. Through the geological process called plate tectonics, this rock is reheated and the carbon is ultimately released again into the atmosphere through volcanism. Mars, however, lacks plate tectonics. 'The important feature of the ancient Martian carbon cycle that we outline in this study is that it was imbalanced. In other words, substantially more carbon dioxide seems to have been sequestered into the rocks than was subsequently released back into the atmosphere,' Tutolo said. 'Models of Martian climate evolution can now incorporate our new analyzes, and in turn, help to refine the role of this imbalanced carbon cycle in maintaining, and ultimately losing, habitability over Mars' planetary history,' Tutolo added.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Curiosity Finds First In Situ Evidence of Carbon Cycle on Ancient Mars
A surprise discovery in Gale Crater is the component that was missing in the puzzle of Mars's climate history. There, embedded in the bedrock, the Curiosity rover has identified a mineral called siderite that can only have formed from the precipitation of carbon from the Martian atmosphere. In other words, billions of years ago, Mars had an active carbon cycle. It's the first in situ evidence of the carbon cycle on Mars, and it represents an important clue about whether or not the red planet could ever have supported life. "It tells us that the planet was habitable and that the models for habitability are correct," says geochemist Benjamin Tutolo of the University of Calgary in Canada. One of the biggest questions about ancient Mars involves its water. All evidence points to a planet that was rich in bodies of liquid water on its surface, with lakes and oceans that sloshed and lapped and crashed in waves upon shorelines. In order to be warm and stable enough for this liquid water, the atmosphere of Mars would have needed a significant amount of carbon dioxide, belched into the sky by the active volcanoes that were once rampant on the surface. Much of this carbon dioxide would have leaked out into space, but enough would have remained to warm Mars, and leave traces in the minerals on the surface. There's just one itty bitty problem. "Models predict that carbonate minerals should be widespread, but, to date, rover-based investigations and satellite-based orbital surveys of the Martian surface have found little evidence of their presence," Tutolo told ScienceAlert. The shock new discovery was found in data from 2022 and 2023, when the Curiosity rover, which has been beavering around Gale Crater for more than 10 years now, made X-ray diffraction analyses of minerals from different parts of the crater floor using its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. Tutolo and his colleagues carefully analyzed the measurements made by Curiosity, and found remarkably pure crystalline siderite in three of the four drill holes bored by Curiosity. This siderite, mostly composed of iron and carbon trioxide, with trace amounts of magnesium, stunned the researchers. "We were surprised to find carbonate minerals here because even the most detailed investigations of the orbital spectroscopy data acquired over these sedimentary rocks were unable to identify carbonate minerals," Tutolo said. "It turns out that the presence of other minerals – particularly highly water-soluble magnesium sulfate salts – likely masks the signature of carbonate minerals in the orbital data. Because similar rocks containing these salts have been identified globally, we infer that they, too, likely contain abundant carbonate minerals." So, not only does the discovery finally pony up the carbonate minerals scientists expected to find, it reveals why scientists have been unable to find them previously, and how to look for more of them across the red planet. The siderite identified in Curiosity data helps confirm and refine models of Mars's early warm period, more than 3.5 billion years ago. It confirms that carbon dioxide was abundant in the Martian atmosphere, and helped keep the planet warm enough for water; and that carbon was extracted from the atmosphere and trapped in minerals on the surface. But the formation of siderite, while good news for scientists studying Mars today, was part of the end of an era for Mars itself. "The important feature of the ancient Martian carbon cycle that we outline in this study is that it was imbalanced. In other words, substantially more CO2 seems to have been sequestered into the rocks than was subsequently released back into the atmosphere," Tutolo explained. "Because Mars is further away from the Sun than Earth, it needs substantially more CO2 in its atmosphere to maintain habitable conditions. The observation that geochemical processes were capturing and sequestering that CO2 suggests that this imbalanced carbon cycle may have challenged Mars's ability to remain habitable." These results have several implications. Now that scientists know that siderite is effectively invisible to orbital instruments, they can go back over previous data and look for strange signs of its presence they may have overlooked. In addition, rover-collected data may have more evidence of carbonate minerals. Now that researchers know mineral carbon sequestration took place on Mars, they can incorporate this information into models of the planet's climate history, and determine what role, if any, this capture played in the decline of Mars's habitability. These minerals, so common and unremarkable on Earth, have opened up a whole new way of understanding Mars. "I was trained as an aqueous geochemist and spent much of my career to date working on carbon sequestration as a solution for human-driven climate change. Working alongside the exceptionally talented and diverse expertise of the Mars Science Laboratory team, I was ultimately able to apply the knowledge I have gained from my climate change solutions work to interpret these mineralogical observations," Tutolo said. "Frankly, if you told me about all of this when I was 15, I never would have believed it!" The findings have been published in Science Advances. There's A Sky Full of Meteors in April! Here's What's on This Easter Weekend Meet Zhúlóng, The Milky Way 'Twin' That Shakes Up Our Cosmic Timeline New Form of Dark Matter May Explain Milky Way's Core Mysteries
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA rover finds fresh evidence of the warm and wet past of Mars
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A mineral called siderite found abundantly in rock drilled by a NASA rover on the surface of Mars is providing fresh evidence of the planet's warmer and wetter ancient past when it boasted substantial bodies of water and potentially harbored life. The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 to explore whether Earth's planetary neighbor was ever able to support microbial life, found the mineral in rock samples drilled at three locations in 2022 and 2023 inside Gale crater, a large impact basin with a mountain in the middle. Siderite is an iron carbonate mineral. Its presence in sedimentary rocks formed billions of years ago offers evidence that Mars once had a dense atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, a gas that would have warmed the planet through the greenhouse effect to the point that it could sustain bodies of liquid water on its surface. There are features on the Martian landscape that many scientists have interpreted as signs that liquid water once flowed across its surface, with potential oceans, lakes and rivers considered as possible habitats for past microbial life. Carbon dioxide is the main climate-regulating greenhouse gas on Earth, as it is on Mars and Venus. Its presence in the atmosphere traps heat from the sun, warming the climate. Until now, evidence indicating the Martian atmosphere previously was rich in carbon dioxide has been sparse. The hypothesis is that when the atmosphere - for reasons not fully understood - evolved from thick and rich in carbon dioxide to thin and starved of this gas, the carbon through geochemical processes became entombed in rocks in the planet's crust as a carbonate mineral. The samples obtained by Curiosity, which drills 1.2 to 1.6 inches (3-4 centimeters) down into rock to study its chemical and mineral composition, lend weight to this notion. The samples contained up to 10.5% siderite by weight, as determined by an instrument onboard the car-sized, six-wheeled rover. "One of the longstanding mysteries in the study of Martian planetary evolution and habitability is: if large amounts of carbon dioxide were required to warm the planet and stabilize liquid water, why are there so few detections of carbonate minerals on the Martian surface?" said University of Calgary geochemist Benjamin Tutolo, a participating scientist on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover team and lead author of the study published on Thursday in the journal Science. "Models predict that carbonate minerals should be widespread. But, to date, rover-based investigations and satellite-based orbital surveys of the Martian surface had found little evidence of their presence," Tutolo added. Because rock similar to that sampled by the rover has been identified globally on Mars, the researchers suspect it too contains an abundance of carbonate minerals and may hold a substantial portion of the carbon dioxide that once warmed Mars. The Gale crater sedimentary rocks - sandstones and mudstones - are thought to have been deposited around 3.5 billion years ago, when this was the site of a lake and before the Martian climate underwent a dramatic change. "The shift of Mars' surface from more habitable in the past, to apparently sterile today, is the largest-known environmental catastrophe," said planetary scientist and study co-author Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago and Astera Institute. "We do not know the cause of this change, but Mars has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere today, and there is evidence that the atmosphere was thicker in the past. This puts a premium on understanding where the carbon went, so discovering a major unsuspected deposit of carbon-rich materials is an important new clue," Kite added. The rover's findings offer insight into the carbon cycle on ancient Mars. On Earth, volcanoes spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the gas is absorbed by surface waters - mainly the ocean - and combines with elements such as calcium to form limestone rock. Through the geological process called plate tectonics, this rock is reheated and the carbon is ultimately released again into the atmosphere through volcanism. Mars, however, lacks plate tectonics. "The important feature of the ancient Martian carbon cycle that we outline in this study is that it was imbalanced. In other words, substantially more carbon dioxide seems to have been sequestered into the rocks than was subsequently released back into the atmosphere," Tutolo said. "Models of Martian climate evolution can now incorporate our new analyses, and in turn, help to refine the role of this imbalanced carbon cycle in maintaining, and ultimately losing, habitability over Mars' planetary history," Tutolo added.
Reuters
17-04-2025
- Science
- Reuters
NASA rover finds fresh evidence of the warm and wet past of Mars
WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - A mineral called siderite found abundantly in rock drilled by a NASA rover on the surface of Mars is providing fresh evidence of the planet's warmer and wetter ancient past when it boasted substantial bodies of water and potentially harbored life. The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 to explore whether Earth 's planetary neighbor was ever able to support microbial life, found the mineral in rock samples drilled at three locations in 2022 and 2023 inside Gale crater, a large impact basin with a mountain in the middle. Make sense of the latest ESG trends affecting companies and governments with the Reuters Sustainable Switch newsletter. Sign up here. Siderite is an iron carbonate mineral. Its presence in sedimentary rocks formed billions of years ago offers evidence that Mars once had a dense atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, a gas that would have warmed the planet through the greenhouse effect to the point that it could sustain bodies of liquid water on its surface. There are features on the Martian landscape that many scientists have interpreted as signs that liquid water once flowed across its surface, with potential oceans, lakes and rivers considered as possible habitats for past microbial life. Carbon dioxide is the main climate-regulating greenhouse gas on Earth, as it is on Mars and Venus. Its presence in the atmosphere traps heat from the sun, warming the climate. Until now, evidence indicating the Martian atmosphere previously was rich in carbon dioxide has been sparse. The hypothesis is that when the atmosphere - for reasons not fully understood - evolved from thick and rich in carbon dioxide to thin and starved of this gas, the carbon through geochemical processes became entombed in rocks in the planet's crust as a carbonate mineral. The samples obtained by Curiosity, which drills 1.2 to 1.6 inches (3-4 centimeters) down into rock to study its chemical and mineral composition, lend weight to this notion. The samples contained up to 10.5% siderite by weight, as determined by an instrument onboard the car-sized, six-wheeled rover. "One of the longstanding mysteries in the study of Martian planetary evolution and habitability is: if large amounts of carbon dioxide were required to warm the planet and stabilize liquid water, why are there so few detections of carbonate minerals on the Martian surface?" said University of Calgary geochemist Benjamin Tutolo, a participating scientist on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover team and lead author of the study published on Thursday in the journal Science, opens new tab. "Models predict that carbonate minerals should be widespread. But, to date, rover-based investigations and satellite-based orbital surveys of the Martian surface had found little evidence of their presence," Tutolo added. Because rock similar to that sampled by the rover has been identified globally on Mars, the researchers suspect it too contains an abundance of carbonate minerals and may hold a substantial portion of the carbon dioxide that once warmed Mars. The Gale crater sedimentary rocks - sandstones and mudstones - are thought to have been deposited around 3.5 billion years ago, when this was the site of a lake and before the Martian climate underwent a dramatic change. "The shift of Mars' surface from more habitable in the past, to apparently sterile today, is the largest-known environmental catastrophe," said planetary scientist and study co-author Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago and Astera Institute. "We do not know the cause of this change, but Mars has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere today, and there is evidence that the atmosphere was thicker in the past. This puts a premium on understanding where the carbon went, so discovering a major unsuspected deposit of carbon-rich materials is an important new clue," Kite added. The rover's findings offer insight into the carbon cycle on ancient Mars. On Earth, volcanoes spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the gas is absorbed by surface waters - mainly the ocean - and combines with elements such as calcium to form limestone rock. Through the geological process called plate tectonics, this rock is reheated and the carbon is ultimately released again into the atmosphere through volcanism. Mars, however, lacks plate tectonics. "The important feature of the ancient Martian carbon cycle that we outline in this study is that it was imbalanced. In other words, substantially more carbon dioxide seems to have been sequestered into the rocks than was subsequently released back into the atmosphere," Tutolo said. "Models of Martian climate evolution can now incorporate our new analyses, and in turn, help to refine the role of this imbalanced carbon cycle in maintaining, and ultimately losing, habitability over Mars' planetary history," Tutolo added.
