Methane pulses on Mars possibly driven by atmospheric pressure changes

New analysis reveals that atmospheric stress fluctuations that pull gases up from underground may very well be liable for releasing subsurface methane into Mars’s ambiance; figuring out when and the place to search for methane may help the Curiosity rover seek for indicators of life.

“Understanding Mars’s methane variations has been highlighted by NASA’s Curiosity crew as the subsequent key step in direction of determining the place it comes from,” mentioned John Ortiz, a graduate scholar at Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory who led the analysis crew. “There are a number of challenges related to assembly that purpose, and an enormous one is figuring out what time of a given sol (Martian day) is finest for Curiosity to carry out an atmospheric sampling experiment.”

The paper was published Jan. 22 within the Journal of Geophysical Analysis: Planets.

A major focus of NASA’s Mars missions, together with Curiosity and Perseverance, is to detect and perceive previous or current indicators of life, equivalent to methane. Nonetheless, with the supply of methane on Mars probably being underground, short-term variations in atmospheric methane ranges have posed a analysis problem.

To raised perceive Mars’s methane ranges, Ortiz and his crew used high-performance computing clusters to simulate how methane travels via networks of underground fractures and is launched into the ambiance, the place it then mixes throughout the atmospheric column. Additionally they modeled how methane is adsorbed onto the pores of rocks, which is a temperature-dependent course of which will contribute to the methane degree fluctuations.

Their simulations predicted methane pulses from the ground surface into the ambiance simply earlier than the Martian dawn within the planet’s northern summer season season, which only in the near past ended. This corroborates earlier rover information suggesting that methane ranges fluctuated not solely seasonally, but in addition day by day.

This precious information helps inform the Curiosity rover’s ongoing sampling marketing campaign.

“Our work suggests a number of key time home windows for Curiosity to gather information. We predict these provide the most effective likelihood of constraining the timing of methane fluctuations, and (hopefully) down the road bringing us nearer to understanding the place it comes from on Mars,” Ortiz mentioned.