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NASA's Mars News Is Not Life, But Perchlorate
leighklotz writes "In an update to the little green men story of not-life-on-Mars, NASA has twittered: 'The buzz this weekend was due to an interesting soil chemistry finding, still preliminary, but now avail here:' where 'here' is NASA Spacecraft Analyzing Martian Soil Data. The exciting bit: 'Within the last month, two samples have been analyzed by the Wet Chemistry Lab of the spacecraft's Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, suggesting one of the soil constituents may be perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance.' Also, 'NASA will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss these recent science activities.'"
These are intermediate results, and should be treated as such. From TFA,
The team also is working to totally exonerate any possibility of the perchlorate readings being influenced by terrestrial sources which may have migrated from the spacecraft, either into samples or into the instrumentation.
OK, so at first I read "highly oxodizing" and was thought, "neat; now they know why Mars is rust colored." However, even after RTFA, I was still clueless as to why I should care. Luckily, Wikipedia comes to the rescue.
From the wiki:
Both potassium perchlorate (KClO4) and ammonium perchlorate (NH4ClO4) are used extensively within the pyrotechnics industry, whereas ammonium perchlorate is a component of solid rocket fuel. Lithium perchlorate, which decomposes exothermically to give oxygen, is used in oxygen "candles" on spacecraft, submarines and in other esoteric situations where a reliable backup or supplementary oxygen supply is needed. Most perchlorate salts are soluble in water.
So, it seems to me that the important discovery is that there could be a relatively massive supply of a chemical compound which is able to produce breathable oxygen, if and when we can ever get people to Mars. If this is indeed the case, then YES, this is exciting news, a whole lot more important than why Mars is red, and is on the level of the sort of thing that the President might want to know about.
Wikipedia is your friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate
Perchlorates are the salts derived from perchloric acid (HClO4). They occur both naturally and through manufacturing. They have been used as a medicine for more than 50 years to treat thyroid gland disorders. They are also used as an oxidizer in rocket fuel and explosives and can be found in airbags, fireworks, and Chilean fertilizers.
Now, do you know what that means?? We could have tons of Chilean fertilizers YEAH!!!!
Perchlorate does three things:
-Treats thyroid gland disorders
-Used as rocket fuel
-Used in generating oxygen (O2) chemically
Seems like good happenstance to land on a planet with frozen water on tracts of rocket fuel and solid oxygen-generating salts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_oxygen_generator
Eh, maybe. First, Mars missions aren't launched from the SS cargo bay, but often (and virtually always for interplanetary missions) the Delta 2's have solids attached for boosting as well as a solid third stage. But it's rare for launch material to get into a payload. If something did get in, it's likely to be a particle or two, not a whole spray, so it is possible only one sensor was contaminated.
But we'll hear soon enough. Either that, or that perchlorate was left by some gooey, amoeba-looking alien of the week that feeds on salt...
So as I understand it, perchlorate can be used to make rocket fuel.
Sort of -
Perchlorates are oxidizers, which technically are not the "fuel" in the reaction. Oxidzers are, however, the stuff that is somewhat dangerous to handle / transport - the fuel is normally a rather ordinary substance (i.e. in black powder the fuel is charcoal, in modern rockets, powdered aluminum)
A catalyst is required, but the less you have to ship to mars, the easier it is...
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Not likely - yes, perchlorate is used in solid rocket fuel, but solid rocket fuel would not be used for a landing because you can't control the burn. It is only really good as a powerful launch vehicle because it can burn fast and hot, but you can't easily turn it on or off or control the rate of burn. For landings and precision manuveuring liquid fuels such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen are much more common.
This means that neither the propellant or the resultant chemicals are perchlorates, so this substance can be ruled out as a contaminant due to propellants. So contamination theory is out. See also the following excerpt from the same site you sourced:
Will Phoenix's descent thrusters alter the composition of its landing site?
Altering the chemistry of our landing site due to our thruster exhaust is unavoidable. The Phoenix Lander uses hydrazine, a hypergolic propellant that turns into ammonia during combustion. So essentially, we are spraying the surface with ammonia and a small amount of hydrazine that was not combusted. The way we get around that is by 1) knowing that we are going to be producing ammonia and 2) by designing the wet chemistry cells to carefully quantify the amount of ammonia in the regolith. We then use this information to interpret our other results.
The News Conference is on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT, but it's not on TV, it's streaming audio from Here...
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Well, with either perchlorates or oxygen, you have an oxidizing agent. The part you're still missing though is the thing to be oxidized.
It's not like the only thing keeping fires in check here on earth is lack of oxygen. There's definitely enough oxygen in the atmosphere to burn things like forests. The real source of energy for a reaction like a forest fire is the chemicals that were at some point created by organisms through the absorption of sunlight.
On presumably lifeless Mars, there is no process by which enough energy coming in from the sun is stored. Therefore you simply cannot have a catastrophic release of energy.
Back in the 70's, NASA ran an experiment on one of the Viking landers to try to see if there was any life on Mars. The experiment contained some radiolabeled "food," to which a sample of regolith and water would be added. If radiolabeled gas evolved from the resulting mixture and was detected, it would be taken as a sign that some kind of native microbe was eating the food and emitting the gas as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration. And in fact, the experiment did detect radiolabeled gas. However, none of the other analyses turned up positive, including the mass spectrometer. So scientists floated an alternative theory: that the Martian regolith contained some kind of oxidizing agent, which would have explained both the evolution of radiolabeled gas, and the absence of life on Mars. Most scientists accepted this theory, but even to this day, there were a few who believed it was a little bit too convenient, and that the labeled release experiment had actually turned up evidence of life. The discovery of perchlorate, a strong oxidizing agent, would put that speculation to rest.
Don't miss the point!
Perchlorates mean OXYGEN! They can breath the stuff AND make rocket fuel! The chemistry is relatively simple too! - 4 oxygen atoms for every potassium (I read somewhere NASA found concentrations of potassium).
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Scientific American reported that "The fuel in the thrusters that Phoenix used to land on Mars was made of hydrazine, not perchlorate."
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=perchlorate-found-on-mars-makes-soi-2008-08-04
Yeah, me neither.
I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with the earlier Viking Labelled Release (LR) experiments, as mentioned in this post.
According to that link, the LR experiment gave a positive result for life. But since a complementary experiment gave a negative result, an alternative explanation posited for the LR data was that there was an oxidising agent in the soil that created a false positive. Since perchlorate is an oxidant, perhaps these latest data represent a conclusive explanation of the Viking LR results as a false positive?
In other words, the data would point to the non-existence of life on Mars. (But that's just a wild guess, I should add.)
Looks like i mixed things up. Perchlorate isn't that aggressive after all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate
A lot. SRBs are very sensitive to defects in the fuel grain, and if the thing burns unevenly you've got problems. Also, big ones have to be manufactured in segments. I can't really see all that infrastructure being boosted up to Mars any time soon.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Do you really think hundreds of scientists, all out to prove each other wrong would overlook highly publicized results? Or maybe the one guy saying something different is wrong.
Another name for iron oxide?
Magnetite.
If that's not good enough, hematite, another form of iron oxide is magnetic at lower Martian surface temperatures. Any kid who has gone out to the desert with a magnet knows that you can pick up all sorts of stuff with it. Maybe people should try a little experimental verification before they claim the entire scientific community is lying (or perpetuating a myth if that sounds better).
No Mars probes used perchlorates. And even if some did...do you realise the difference in scale between miniscule amounts such probe would care and the whole f***ing planet?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Because, clearly, a dozen or so spent or unspent rockets are enough to contaminate an entire planet to levels higher than background noise...
It is an ion. Was it perhaps Calcium perchlorate, hydrogen perchlorate or something else. Maybe it was Uranium perchlorate?
Saying it was perchlorate is as meaningless as saying that the sea is full of hydroxide, In fact H20 is hydrogen hydroxide - or water. We need a more meaningful statement...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Perchlorates such as sodium perchlorate can be made by electrolysing NaCl water. The NaCl first becomes NaOCl ( Sodium Hypoclorite aka Bleach ) then Sodium Chlorite and then Sodium Chlorate ( NaClO3 ). Sodium Chlorate is WEED KILLER. Then finally another oxygen is added to make NaClO4 ( Sodium Perchlorate ).
I doubt a bulk commoditity product like fertilizer would be made that would likely be contaminated with weed killer unless great care were taken. 'Great care' would be too expensive for something that is supposed to be cheap such as fertilizer.
Yes, there is hydrogen and oxygen produced in electrolysis of saltwater, but some of the oxygen oxygenates the Cl to make ClOx where X = 1, 2, 3, or 4. You'll notice less than half the oxygen ( by volume ) is produced than hydrogen. The missing O2 goes to turning Cl- into ClOx-
...
But it could be a good source for manufacturing Oxygen. Something we sorta need to survive on long space trips ;)
One would also assume you could potentially use the Oxygen stripped off for other things besides breathing.
This sounds SO, SO, SO improbable.
At least to me. Ya think they land in previously landed places?
I mean its a whole planet. It would seem to me that if you calculate a, say 1000 kilometer radius from your landing site that is "clean" (noone landed inside the circle) by our records, this posibility you point out is highly improbable to happen.
Even more so if you pick the lannding at random.
In any case, i would be astonished to find out that they knowingly went in and landed in a contaminated site: everything we touch there we contaminate.
NO SIG
Perhaps - perhaps not - 3 components in rocket fuel - oxidizer (perchlorate), fuel and a catalyst. All 3 have to be in close proximity and in the right state to work.
"Fuel" is typically fairly benign stuff - finely ground aluminum, etc - the oxidizer is the stuff that is a bit of a pain to transport.
Even if there was a total lack of fuel (unlikely) on Mars, mining the oxidizer and lifting it into orbit would dramatically lower the amount of power required in the creation of a big rocket - Mars gravity is just over 1/3rd that of Earth's.
It's not something we can use right away, but it makes setting up shop there and doing something productive a hell of a lot easier.
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Moreover, a hot jet of ammonia/hydrazine is a reducing atmosphere that specifically would destroy perchlorates.
Wikipedia is your friend
Please! Stop saying things like that. It may be handy, but it's NOT your friend!