Unique chance to confirm methane .. and perhaps
life on Mars Planetary scientists are interested in
methane on Mars because it could be a sign of life.
Although it can be produced by geological sources,
on Earth the vast majority of the gas is pumped out by
microbes and other living things.
We have spotted tantalising glimpses of methane
burps on Mars a few times over the years, but it
has been difficult to confirm the detections with
other instruments.
Some sort of destruction mechanism might quickly
remove methane from the lower atmosphere,
but the uncertainty has led to scepticism about past
methane sightings.
This time could be different. an expert says that
Mars Express just happened to have its spectrometer
trained on Gale Crater for an extended period, a
technique known as “spot tracking”, around 20 hours
before the rover made its detection on the ground,
as well as a day later.
“We typically have a couple of spot-tracking events
per month, so we were lucky here,” he says.
Another satellite called the Trace Gas Orbiter, which
boasts two instruments capable of detecting methane,
also has data from the same area on the same day.