The rover’s tunable laser spectrometer, called SAM, which stands for Sample Analysis at Mars, detected the largest amount of methane ever measured during its mission.
The reading indicated 21 parts per billion units by volume, or ppbv. That means of the volume of air on Mars is being assessed, one billionth of the volume of air is methane, the agency said.
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So why is this unusually large amount of methane so interesting? On Earth, microbial life is a key source of methane. But the agency also warned that expectations of life should be managed due to the fact that interactions between rocks and water can also create methane, and Mars has water and an abundance of rocks.
“With our current measurements, we have no way of telling if the methane source is biology or geology, or even ancient or modern,” said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The origin of the methane won’t be evident right away because the rover doesn’t have any instruments that can trace or determine the source. Right now, they can’t even be sure that the methane is coming from a spot in the Gale Crater, where Curiosity is located, or emerged from elsewhere on Mars.
Source: Curiosity rover detects highest levels of methane on Mars
