Dark streaks that may indicate water seeping to the surface of Mars are proving a new challenge for Nasa’s Curiosity rover.
The problem is that Nasa is afraid that the rover may have Earth microbes on it‚ as it wasn’t fully sterilised.
The streaks behave in a way consistent with water – appearing and disappearing seasonally‚ but that doesn’t mean the planet is actually wet.
Scientists at Nasa would like to know for sure‚ but there are problems with investigating it directly.
“It’s not as simple as driving a rover to a potential site and taking a scoop of soil‚” said Jim Green‚ NASA’s director of planetary science in a statement. “Not only are these on steep slopes‚ we need to ensure that planetary protection concerns are met. In other words‚ how can we search for evidence of life without contaminating the sites with bugs from Earth?”
Nature reports that this problem is particularly tricky‚ as the rover is scheduled to climb mountain Aeolis Mons next month.
This mountain plays host to one such dark streak‚ and Nasa isn’t too sure how far away the rover has to be in order to avoid contaminating it.
“Kilometres away—it’s unlikely that it would be an issue. In terms of coming much closer‚ we need to understand well in advance the potential for Earth organisms to come off the rover‚ and that will tell us how far away the rover should stay‚” Catharine Conley‚ NASA’s planetary protection officer said in a statement.
They may end up having to chart a totally different course to avoid the risk.
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