A new experiment designed to detect amino acids on Mars, in spite of the reactive perchlorate in the Martian soil that typically breaks organic compounds down, could fly on a future mission to Mars to help in the search for life there.
Where there are amino acids, there may be – or once was – life. So naturally, when NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander collected samples of the red planet’s soil (a.k.a. regolith), scientists looked for these organic compounds. Yet when they tested the regolith for them, they were nowhere to be found. There had to be some organic compounds though, even if they just came from meteorites that landed on Mars.
When a wet chemical analysis was done the problem became obvious. The alkaline soil samples contained almost one percent perchlorate (ClO4), which is a highly reactive chemical. So when the scientists had originally tested for organics using pyrolysis (i.e. using high temperatures to break compounds down), the perchlorate, which is used on Earth as an explosive and fuel propellant, destroyed the very molecules they were looking for. Perchlorate specializes in combusting organics when heated – no wonder there were none in any of the samples.
To get around the problem, a new tool was needed, and not only did it need to deal with the perchlorate issue, it also had to be simple enough to safely make it to Mars on the next lander. A recent paper by Dr Aaron Noell at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) looked at using subcritical water extraction (SCWE – pronounced ‘squee’) as a solution to the pyrolysis/perchlorate problem.
To read more, click here.