Has the Mars Rover Sniffed Methane?

First time accepted submitter GrimAndBearIt writes "NASA's Curiosity rover is poised to settle years of debate on the question of atmospheric methane on Mars, which would be a sign of microbial life. With parts per trillion sensitivity, it's not so much a question of whether the rover will be able to smell trace amounts of methane, but rather a question of how much. NASA has announced that Grotzinger's team will discuss atmospheric measurements at a briefing on 2 November. If the rover has detected methane at sufficiently high concentration, or exhibiting temporal variations of the kind that suggests microbial activity, then it will surely motivate a desire to identify and map the sources."

Comments

Re:microbial or anorganic?

[arisvega]

In absence of free oxygen in Mars atmosphere, it is probably quite stable.

No, quite the opposite actually- it gets destroyed (photodissociated) by -mainly- UV radiation.

Methane being unstable and easily destroyed in the Martian atmosphere is the whole point of using it as a 'life-tracer': if it is around at high and unaccounted for amounts, then there has to be continuously produced somehow, and so far a biological origin for its production cannot be ruled out.

Re:Who here worked on Viking?

[cultiv8]

Here's the original post: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=278121&cid=20338487