Last year, astronomers announced that visual evidence and spectral analysis from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was substantial enough to conclude that liquid water exists on Mars. Briny water flows in many mountainous regions of Mars when the surface temperature rises enough, becoming visible on the sandy hillsides as dark stains that appear and then recede. It's a seasonal phenomenon known as recurring slope lineae, or RSL.

Now, according to Aviation Week, NASA has announced that a region close to the Curiosity rover may have RSL, and the nuclear-powered robot is going to go check it out.

RSL on Mars NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

First, Curiosity will move into a position that will allow the rover to image the nearby hillsides that could contain liquid water. The rover is currently near Mount Sharp, a 2.4-mile-high mountain in the center of Mars's Gale Crater. Two gullies on the side of the mountain that might have RSL are the targets for observation.

"Soon, hopefully within a year, we will be in a position to take higher-resolution images of the area that's purported to be an RSL, at a much higher resolution than that of MRO [Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]," Jim Green, Director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, told Aviation Week. "And then we'd be able to observe it… and say, 'no, that's really a dust slide,' or watch it change."

If images taken with Curiosity's MastCam camera confirm that the hilly region nearby has periodically flowing liquid water, then NASA will consider sending the rover to take a sample, a decision that ultimately would fall to the "planetary protection officer," the person in charge of ensuring that spacecraft don't mistakenly contaminate another celestial body with microorganisms from Earth.

Green says it is likely that any microorganisms that managed to survive Curiosity's sterilization process before launch have since been killed by the radiation and extreme conditions on Mars. It will take extensive analysis, however, to approve the rover to travel to the RSL region, where it could collect material and even use its ChemCam laser to vaporize a sample and spectrographically analyze it to determine its composition. Curiosity is unlikely to determine definitely whether life exists on Mars, but the rover could provide valuable data for a future mission designed for that purpose.

If there is no water in the region near Curiosity, or if Curiosity cannot go take samples in the area, there are still a number of ways NASA could keep searching for life in the watery hillsides. The 1970s Viking landers, for example, were heat-treated to sterilize the spacecraft—an effective method, but one that NASA has moved away from. Extra steps could be taken to sterilize the Mars 2020 rover so that one of its primary missions could be to sample an RSL area.

It's been 50 years since we first sent a spacecraft to the red planet, and we still haven't been able to determine whether our next-door neighbor is habitable. But now that we know there is liquid water, the search is on.

Source: Aviation Week

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