A year after reporting that NASA’s Curiosity rover had found no evidence of methane gas on Mars, all but dashing hopes that organisms might be living there now, scientists reversed themselves on Tuesday.
The new Curiosity measurements “confirmed this startling reality that methane is being released, sporadically, and it is being destroyed quickly,” he said. “Both events are surprising.”
As for the organic molecules, they showed up in a mudstone nicknamed Cumberland that Curiosity drilled in May 2013.
Within Curiosity is a miniature chemistry laboratory that detected significant amounts of the organic molecule chlorobenzene, in much higher concentrations than had been seen in other rocks it had examined.
Scientists spent months analyzing whether the organic compounds came from Cumberland or contamination Curiosity had brought from Earth.
