Mysteries of Mars

Data collected by the rover"s meteorological instruments indicates significant dust devil activity.Mars is well known for its dust storms, sometimes these can become large enough to encompass the entire planet for days. While it hasn"t caught any on camera, Curiosity has recorded evidence that smaller vortices have been appearing nearby and that the rover itself mayhave been run over by one."A dust-devil looks essentially like what you would expect from the movies - a tiny tornado that is lifting dust," said NASA scientist Manuel de la Torre Juarez.

"Understanding these phenomena is very important because the Martian climate is driven largely by its dust cycle." Curiosity has spent several weeks now parked at a sand dune dubbed "Rocknest", where it has been testingprocedures for digging up soil samples and delivering them to the robot"s big internal laboratories.  

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NASA"s Curiosity rover has used its robotic arm to take a detailed photograph of itself on Mars.One of the advantages of Curiosity over previous Mars rovers is its ability to photograph itself so that engineers can get an idea of its status while trekking across the dunes of the Red Planet. These self-portrait pictures help to determine the state of the wheels as well as see how much dusthas built up on the rover since it landed back in August.The latest photograph shows the rover at a location known as "Rocknest", the spot at which the first scoops up Martian soil were dug up for analysis.

Mount Sharp can also be seen looming in the background. The mosaic shows the rover at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale Crater where the mission"s first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in front of the rover.  

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NASA"s Mars rover Curiosity has been unable to find any signs of methane on the Red Planet.The presence of methane on Mars would have been a promising indicator that there was life there as on Earth over 90% of the methane in the atmosphere is produced by living organisms. Following measurements taken with Curiosity"s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)instrument there has so far been no indication of the gas."The bottom line is that we have no detection of methane so far," said JPL"s Chris Webster.

"But we"re going to keep looking in the months ahead since Mars, as we all know, may yet hold surprises for us." NASA"s Mars rover Curiosity has detected no methane in its first analyses of the Martian atmosphere - news that will doubtlessdisappoint those who hope to find life on the Red Planet.  

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It is believed that Mars rovers like Curiosity may one day be retrieved and placed in a museum.NASA"s Mars programme director Doug McCuistion has said that he hopes astronauts will one day visit the rover and bring it home. "It is my hope that humans will be sent to Mars in the 2030s, or 2040s, and they will be able to walk up to Curiosity and bring it back, as I am sure there is a museum out there that would love to have it," he said. Withits nuclear power source the Curiosity rover could continue to operate for decades.McCuistion"s comments raise other questions about the future of other spacecraft that have been sent out to explore the solar system.

Could humans one day catch up with the two Voyager probes and bring them back to Earth to take pride and place in a museum exhibit ? What about the Apollo moon landers ? Could the site of Neil Armstrong"s first footprints on the lunar surface become a museum exhibit in itself ? The director of Nasa"s Mars exploration programme has spoken of hopes that one day the rover Curiosity might be brought back to Earth by astronauts.  

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