So, we finally had the Curiosity rover talk at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, where they outlined what had been found, as I talked about here, and the update here. There were some interesting insights, not least that Martian soil contains water with a very high percentage of deuterium(“heavy” hydrogen, which with oxygen makes “heavy water”), which is hydrogen with a neutron as well a proton in its nucleus (normal hydrogen just has a proton).
Curiosity Rover having a look at some rocks.(Artist’s impression – Credit: NASA)
Deuterium is quite useful as a neutron moderator in nuclear fission reactors, but if we can get nuclear fusion off the ground, it would become far more useful, as it can be used as fuel for both deuterium-tritium fusion and deuterium-deuterium fusion (you can make tritium from heavy water too).
The other news from that talk was that some carbon-chlorine compounds(the slide at 21 mins 17 secs in the talk linked above) were found, which are, strictly speaking organic molecules. The reason NASA are not confirming whether the organic molecules are from Mars is because they’re not quite sure where the carbon came from – was it native to Martian soil, did it come from meteorites or some other form of contamination? This is why they were being rather cagey about their find.
As I’ve said before, this is just the beginning of Curiosity’s mission, so hopefully we’ll get a clearer picture in the days to come.
Land of Gregs 