Slashdot Mirror
NASA Rover May Contaminate Its Samples of Mars
sciencehabit writes "The Curiosity rover will definitely find evidence of an advanced civilization if it lands safely on Mars. That's because rock samples the rover drills are likely to be contaminated with bits of Teflon from the rover's machinery, NASA announced during a press teleconference. The bits of Teflon can then mix with the sample, which will be vaporized for analysis. The problem for the scientists is that Teflon is two-thirds carbon — the same element they are looking for on Mars."
Fortunately, this problem isn't a showstopper: "...there are still mitigation steps to take if SAM's analysis is potentially compromised. Contaminant production appears to be stronger in the drill's percussion mode, when it pounds powerfully and rapidly on Martian rock. So ratcheting the percussion down, or switching over to the more gentle rotary mode, may make the issue more manageable. If that doesn't work, the MSL team could just take the drill out of commission, solely scooping soil instead of also boring into rock. Curiosity could still access the interior of some Martian rocks by rolling over them with its wheels, Grotzinger said. But all in all, he's confident that the team will figure things out in the next month or two."
I think somebody had another English-metric goof when they were doing their stoichiometry.
(CF2)n -> 24% carbon, 76% fluorine by mass, at least by my calculations.
That much money and still no attention to detail?
Amazing that they built and shipped this thing before realizing that the coating on their drill/pulverizer would chip off. You can't use metal utensils on Teflon cookware, but we should go ahead and put it on a Mars-bound drill bit meant for rocks. Riiiiiight.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Right now, the rover is in *space*. I can definitely understand catching this problem in simulations or in on-Earth tests, or catching it belatedly when they finally get to Mars and wonder why all the rocks contain fluorine, but in space? Only thing I can think of is "someone re-ran some simulations and noticed they messed up", which doesn't seem very probable (unless the engineers had been suspecting this since before launch, and only now have sufficient "proof").
Then again, I'm not a rocket scientist, so I probably missed something.
It's going to beam back photos, and even 720p video, of Mars that show Mars as it would look from human eyes.
I know its other mission is far grander, far more important, but I just find the concept of that camera to be enough.
...mainly because every time I hear the word 'teflon', it reminds me that I really, really gotta throw that pan out before I get poisoned by the stuff. Seriously, why am I still using the thing? Everything sticks to it, and I'm actually eating teflon flakes.
But yea, Mars and stuff.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
I would just like to say here and now, that I for one support our new teflon overlords.
Well, at least the samples won't get stuck.
I don't know how sensitive the detector they are using is, but they should also be able to detect the fluorine molecules (which outnumber the carbon 2 to 1, unlike what TFA claims). I don't imagine they expect to find a lot of fluorine in the rocks on Mars, so the presence of fluorine indicates the sample is contaminated and they should ignore the carbon. If the analysis is really sensitive, they could even correlate the amount of fluorine with the expected amount of carbon (since it should be exactly 2 to 1), allowing the contaminating carbon to be eliminate from the analysis.
This assumes the fluorine can be accurately analyzed, which may be a major issue since it is extremely reactive. I'm not a chemist, though, so I don't know how big an issue that could be.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Scientists continue to refine software even after the launch date. Also, if they're anything like me (a recent aerospace B.S. grad), they'll tend to obsess about their solutions, verifying all data or improving models until go-time. Now how the planetary protection protocol team even let this pass an initial design review is hard to say, perhaps the coating was not documented at all.
They could have used a diamond-tipped drill.
MIB did it.
Should be enough fuel for a turn around. :-)
DuPont will be very quick to remind you that if the provider didn't pay the DuPont-tax, they cannot call PolyTetraFluoroEthylene (PTFE) by the trademark Teflon!
Of course, this is great news for nasa, as it means the mission couldn't possibly have been compromised by Teflon, so long as they didn't pay DuPont money!
(bonus: captcha is 'screwed')
Teflon Slashdot strays next to a dripping pencil. The aged basis fiddles within an unfounded mechanism. A tooth beams with PolyTetraFlouroEthylene compound sensationalist media. How can PolyTetraFlouroEthylene compound sensationalist media pray Teflon Slashdot ?
No amount of ass-covering bureaucrats can compensate for the lack of a single competent engineer.
Given that NASA is such a bloated bureaucracy, why wasn't there a guy (or girl, but let's be realistic here...) whose sole job was to review every design decision and consider it against the stated mission of the rover: to search for carbonaceous life on Mars? Isn't that an obvious thing to do? In fact, I don't think that's my idea. I think Apollo-era NASA did things like that. For that matter, from a purely scientific perspective, don't geologists looking for trace minerals normally consider the composition of their own sampling gear? You're almost guaranteed to get tiny bits of the metal your drill is made of in your sample when you're using it to drill into rock. Or maybe they got obsessed with that problem and neglected the rest of the machinery?
In any case, it's sad how far NASA has fallen.
These coatings and foils that 'are not designed to come off' inevitably DO come off.
We need to stop designing things with unrealistic expectations.
Preferably before the nanotech age takes off.
Why don't we bring some life there and start bio transforming it? There's gotta be a few things that could live there.
Someone had to say it.
Think of how much you can shrink the schedule by testing the equipment and analyzing the test results while the device is on its way.
We see here one of the primary strengths of robotics over human missions, namely, the speed with which one can correct errors . It'll be no more than 10 years, er, 20, no make that 30 or even... 40 years before they can get another mission up there with a drill that isn't contaminated, maybe. With a manned mission, they'd be able to troubleshoot the drill on the spot, which is clearly an inferior process.
these days, it's not like they'd work on other projects.. they'd be laid off or retired, and they'd go work for someone else, never to return.
Why not just drill (almost) horizontally into a rock close to ground level? The samples will fall near the base of the rock, and the Teflon from the housing will fall one drill bit length away from the rock. It only falls onto your sample if you drill vertically, no?
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
Like a pregnant girl on a sex ed class, kinda too late isn't it?
So some people have said they have a duplicate drill here on earth. Can't they at least roughly simulate the same work that the Mars one is going to do, and see how much contamination happens, then compensate in the results? Totally out of my field, so I have no idea.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If the Mars Polar Lander crash-lands on Mars, does it make a sound?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff