https://zettelsraum.blogspot.com/2022/06...e-des-mars.html

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Perseverance rover finds organic matter ‘treasure’ on Mars
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Updated 2:35 AM EDT, Fri September 16, 2022

Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.

A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
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The rover investigated the crater floor and found evidence of igneous, or volcanic, rock. During its second campaign to study the delta over the past five months, Perseverance has found rich sedimentary rock layers that add more to the story of Mars’ ancient climate and environment.

The mission team nicknamed one of the rocks that Perseverance sampled as Wildcat Ridge. The rock likely formed when mud and sand settled in a saltwater lake as it evaporated billions of years ago. The rover scraped away at the surface of the rock and analyzed it with an instrument known as the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.

This rock-zapping laser functions as a fancy black light to uncover chemicals, minerals and organic matter, said Sunanda Sharma, SHERLOC scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The instrument’s analysis revealed that the organic minerals are likely aromatics, or stable molecules of carbon and hydrogen, which are connected to sulfates. Sulfate minerals, often found sandwiched within the layers of sedimentary rocks, preserve information about the watery environments they formed in.

Organic molecules are of interest on Mars because they represent the building blocks of life, such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, as well as nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur. Not all organic molecules require life to form because some can be created through chemical processes.

“While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we’ve seen here on Earth,” Sharma said. “To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue. And we’re getting stronger and stronger clues as we’re moving through our delta campaign.”

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https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/world...er%20evaporated.

Zitat von January 9, 2023

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China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover appear to be in trouble

HELSINKI — The two spacecraft making up China’s first interplanetary mission are both suffering issues, with the rover potentially lost on the surface after winter hibernation.

The Zhurong Mars rover has been hibernating on the Martian surface since May 18 last year and was expected to resume activity in December, around the time of the Spring equinox in the northern hemisphere.

However no announcement of establishing contact with the rover has been made. The South China Morning Post reported Jan. 7, citing sources that do not wish to be named, that teams on Earth have yet to receive a signal from Zhurong.

The Zhurong rover landed in Mars’s Utopia Planitia region in May 2021 but entered a period of hibernation to ride out winter, when both temperatures and solar radiation levels are too low for the solar-powered rover to operate.

The rover was expected to autonomously resume activities once it can generate sufficient energy from solar power and when temperatures reach around minus 15 degrees Celsius.

Zhurong entered hibernation when local temperatures were around minus 20 degrees, according to the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, after the autumn equinox in late February. Conditions should already by more favorable following the Spring equinox on Dec. 26. Mars has an axial tilt of around 25 degrees, meaning it has has similar seasonal variations to Earth during its orbit around the sun.

While there has so far been no official comment, the rover may have been impacted by sand storms in the area, which could reduce the levels of energy generation. The Tianwen-1 orbiter noted storms around the landing area in March and April 2021.
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Meanwhile the Tianwen-1 orbiter has been tasked with assessing the area and attempting to contact the rover. Teams are however also having trouble receiving data from the orbiter, according to SCMP.

Radio amateurs have also noted issues with attempts for ground stations to lock onto the orbiter.

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https://spacenews.com/chinas-tianwen-1-m...-be-in-trouble/